Abstract
Cladosiphon okamuranus is an original strain of a brown alga in Okinawa, which have fucoxanthin-chlorophyll a/c proteins (FCP) as a major photosynthetic antenna complexes. FCP is thought to transfer energy to the oxygenic photosystem I and II, although its detail is not clarified yet. Recently Iha et al. has been successful to culture a discoid germiling of a brown alga, which is a precursor of an alga body. We established the isolation and purification method of the FCP from the discoidal form. We also found the FCP exists as a homo- or hetero-trimer formed by the products of three highly homologous subunits in unequal stoichiometries. Hereafter, we call this particular complex as 'mozuku FCP'. In this study, we determined the optical-properties of the pigments binding in the 'mozuku FCP', which has high biochemical degree of purity. First, we determined the pigment composition of the 'mozuku FCP' using HPLC and 1H-NMR. Then, we also measured the fluorescence and fluorescence-excitation spectra of the 'mozuku FCP' to determine the efficiencies of energy transfer from both fucoxanthin and Chl c to Chl a.
