Light-intensity dependent expression of genes for light-harvesting chlorophyll-a/b proteins of Photosystem II in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii

摘要

Several homologous light-harvesting chlorophyll a/b-binding (LHC) proteins constitute the antenna system that absorbs photon and transfer its energy to the reaction centers of the photosystems in green algae and higher plants. This system tunes the energy input to other photosynthetic processes in response to the light intensity by changing the antenna size. Unicellular green algae seem to be of great advantage to studies of acclimation to light. In fact, it has been reported that LHCII protein and/or mRNA abundance changes in response to light intensity in some algal species (Escoubas et al. 1995, Maxwell et al. 1995a, 1995b). However, many of genes for algal LHC proteins have not been identified yet, in contrast to the higher plants Lhc genes which have been well established (Green and Durnford 1996). To elucidate the light-dependent regulation of the antenna system, responses of the multiple Lhc genes must be studied comprehensively.