Affiliation:
1. Robert Hill Institute for Photosynthesis and Krebs Institute for Biomolecular Research, Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom
Abstract
ABSTRACT
The bacteriochlorophyll of the purple photosynthetic bacterium
Rhodobacter sphaeroides
is esterified with phytol. The presence of this alcohol moiety is essential for the correct assembly of the photosynthetic apparatus. Despite this, and the fact that
R. sphaeroides
is widely used for the study of structure-function relationships in photosynthesis, the molecular genetics of the steps in which the alcohol is added and modified have not previously been investigated in this organism. Sequencing near the center of the photosynthesis gene cluster has now revealed the existence of an open reading frame encoding a putative 394-amino-acid polypeptide displaying strong homology with the products of a number of genes from other photosynthetic organisms, each proposed to be responsible for the reduction of the alcohol moiety of (bacterio)chlorophyll to phytol. An
R. sphaeroides
transposon mutant in this gene,
bchP
, possessed a structurally modified photosystem assembled with bacteriochlorophyll esterified with geranylgeraniol, rather than with phytol, implying that the product of this gene was geranylgeranyl-bacteriochlorophyll reductase. This identification was confirmed by the performance of in vitro assays using heterologously expressed protein, providing the first direct demonstration of the activity of a
bchP
gene product.
Publisher
American Society for Microbiology
Subject
Molecular Biology,Microbiology
Cited by
67 articles.
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