Harvesting Far-Red Light with Plant Antenna Complexes Incorporating Chlorophyll d.

Eduard Elias, Nicoletta Liguori, Yoshitaka Saga, Judith Schäfers, Roberta Croce

Biomacromolecules 2021 Aug 09

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Increasing the absorption cross section of plants by introducing far-red absorbing chlorophylls (Chls) has been proposed as a strategy to boost crop yields. To make this strategy effective, these Chls should bind to the photosynthetic complexes without altering their functional architecture. To investigate if plant-specific antenna complexes can provide the protein scaffold to accommodate these Chls, we have reconstituted the main light-harvesting complex (LHC) of plants LHCII in vitro and in silico, with Chl d. The results demonstrate that LHCII can bind Chl d in a number of binding sites, shifting the maximum absorption ∼25 nm toward the red with respect to the wild-type complex (LHCII with Chl a and b) while maintaining the native LHC architecture. Ultrafast spectroscopic measurements show that the complex is functional in light harvesting and excitation energy transfer. Overall, we here demonstrate that it is possible to obtain plant LHCs with enhanced far-red absorption and intact functional properties.

Citation

Eduard Elias, Nicoletta Liguori, Yoshitaka Saga, Judith Schäfers, Roberta Croce. Harvesting Far-Red Light with Plant Antenna Complexes Incorporating Chlorophyll d. Biomacromolecules. 2021 Aug 09;22(8):3313-3322