Abstract
The unicellular green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii has been used to study photosynthesis as a model organism because this alga is amenable to genetic and biochemical analyses. In addition, this organism is able to grow not only photoautotrophically in minimal medium in light but also heterotrophically in the medium containing acetate. Thus quite a few numbers of photosynthetic mutants have been isolated and characterized. More recently chloroplast and nuclear transformations became possible so that measurement of fluorescence yield is becoming more important. Here we will report fluorescence induction kinetics of Chlamydomonas wild type cells and compare the kinetics with those of higher plants. We will also present fluorescence induction kinetics of various mutants and transformants of Chlamydomonas to discuss how mutations affect the fluorescence kinetics.
