Abstract
Photosynthetic pigments are bound to their specific proteins to form pigment-protein complexes that enable the efficient energy transfer between different pigments. Light-harvesting apparatus can be divided into the core and peripheral antenna. Core antenna is composed of chlorophyll a-protein complexes and their pigment composition and organization do not change under any environmental conditions. Peripheral antenna is composed of light-harvesting chlorophyll a/b-protein complexes (LHC) in green plants. However, the mechanism concerning the preferential incorporation of chlorophyll b into LHC have not been revealed.
In order to elucidate the mechanism, we introduced prochlorothrix CAO into Arabidopsis thaliana and investigated the pigment compositions of the complexes. The core antenna of chlorophyll a-protein complexes became chlorophyll a/b-protein complexes in the transgenic plants. We will report the photosynthetic performance of the transgenic plants and discuss the regulation of chlorophyll distribution and the photosynthetic performance of the transgenic plants.
