Destruction of a Single Chlorophyll Is Correlated with the Photoinhibition of Photosystem II with a Transiently Inactive Donor Side (Photodamage/Oxygen Evolution)
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Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA Vol. 92, pp. 12195-12199, December 1995 Biochemistry Destruction of a single chlorophyll is correlated with the photoinhibition of photosystem II with a transiently inactive donor side (photodamage/oxygen evolution) DIRK BUMANN AND DIETER OESTERHELT* Department of Membrane Biochemistry, Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry, Am Klopferspitz 18a, 82152 Martinsried, Germany Communicated by George Feher, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, August 7, 1995 (received for review January 30, 1995) ABSTRACT Pigments destroyed during photoinhibition Experimental Procedures of water-splitting photosystem II core complexes from the green alga Chiamydomonas reinhardtii were studied. Under Water-splitting PSII core complexes containing about 40 Chl conditions of a transiently inactivated donor side, illumina- a were isolated from the green alga Chiamydomonas reinhardtii tion leads to an irreversible inhibition of the electron transfer as described (28). These complexes have a somewhat altered at the donor side that is paralleled by the destruction of QB side. Since the QA side seems to be intact and is accessible chlorophylls a absorbing maximally around 674 and 682 nm. for ferricyanide, the acceptor side allows efficient electron The observed stochiometry of 1 + 0.1 destroyed chlorophyll flow out of PSII in the presence of this electron acceptor. per inhibited photosystem II suggests that chlorophyll de- For photoinhibition experiments frozen samples were struction could be the primary photodamage causing the thawed on ice and diluted in 20 mM morpholineethanesulfonic inhibition of photosystem II under these conditions. acid/KOH, pH 6.5/0.03% dodecyl maltoside/2 mM ferricya- nide (final PSII concentration, 0.2 ,tM; Ca2+ concentration = 0 mM, Cl- concentration < 0.1 mM) and illuminated in a In photosynthesis light energy is converted to chemical energy. fluorescence cuvette (pathlength, 10 mm; volume, 1.2 ml) with However, side reactions can lead to considerable destruction light from a xenon lamp transmitted through a Schott RG630 of the photosynthetic apparatus and a concomitant loss of cutoff filter, a KG1 heat filter, and 4 cm of water at a photosynthetic activity in a process called photoinhibition (1). temperature of 4°C for time intervals from 1 to 30 s (80 In oxygenic photosynthesis the main target for photoinhibition mJ cm-2 in the range of 630-720 nm). During illumination the is photosystem II (PSII) (2). In intact PSII the excited primary sample was slowly stirred to obtain a uniform photoinhibition. donor P680 reduces plastoquinone. The oxidized primary Bleaching spectra (dark minus illuminated) were recorded on donor P680+ is then reduced by water via an redoxactive an Aminco DW2000 spectrophotometer (spectral bandwidth, tyrosine "Z" (3). In case of a transient malfunction of the 2 nm) after a dark period of 5 min to eliminate reversible water-splitting reaction, P680+ has an extended lifetime during signals. which it can degrade (4) or damage other PSII components, To estimate the number of destroyed Chl per PSII we including carotenoids, chlorophylls (Chl), possibly Z, the man- assumed that all 40 Chl a of PSII have similar oscillator ganese binding sites, and other amino acids of the PSII proteins strengths. The same assumption has been made for the analysis (5-10). One or several of these damages result in an irrevers- of PSII-RC absorption spectra (22, 29-31) and seems reason- ible inhibition of the electron transfer from Z to P680+ and able since the protein environment modulates the Qy(0-0)- hence in an irreversible loss of the water-splitting activity (6, absorption properties of Chl a only weakly as compared to Chl 7, 10-14). Despite many investigations it is still not clear which a in acetone (shift of absorption maximum by <20 nm, increase of the various damages actually causes this inhibition. We of the oscillator strength by about 10%; D.B., unpublished investigated this problem by correlating pigment destruction results). The 2 pheo and 3 Chl b bound to PSII core complexes with the loss of oxygen evolving activity. (28) were assumed to have absorptions in the region 650-720 Quantitative observations of pigment destruction in vivo or nm equivalent to about 3 Chl a giving a total absorption of all in grana membranes are difficult due to the high number of chlorins equivalent to 43 Chl a. Based on these assumptions we pigments per PSII (200-700) (15, 16). PSII reaction center estimated that a 1% absorption decrease in the region 650-720 preparations (PSII-RC) contain only 4-6 Chl, 2 pheophytins nm corresponds to an average destruction of 0.43 Chl a per (pheo), and 1-2 carotenoids (car) per PSII (17-21). Hence, PSII. destruction of less than one pigment per PSII can be Linear dichroism spectra were recorded with PSII embed- easily ded in acrylamide gels [final concentrations: 12.5% (wt/vol) observed in these particles (4, 22-24). However, since the acrylamide, 0.4% (wt/vol) N,N-methylenbisacrylamide, 0.03% electron transfer from Z to P680+ is already strongly impaired (vol/vol) N,N,N',N'-tetramethylparaphenylenediamine, in freshly isolated PSII-RC (25-27), these particles cannot be 0.05% (wt/vol) ammonium persulfate, 10 mM morpho- used for the investigation of the first irreversibly inactivating lineethanesulfonic acid/KOH, pH 6.5; the volume was 0.7 ml] reaction of photoinhibition. We therefore used PSII core (32, 33). The gels were polymerized for 1 h at 4°C in the dark complexes, which have an intermediate pigment content and and then washed for several hours in 20 mM morpho- are capable of water splitting (28). With these particles it is lineethanesulfonic acid/KOH, pH 6.5. The gels were then possible to observe the destruction of less than one Chl per soaked in 20 mM morpholineethanesulfonic acid/KOH, pH PSII and to measure the loss of water-splitting activity (in- 6.5/2 mM ferricyanide. We had to soak the gels in acceptor cluding the electron transfer from Z to P680+) in parallel. solution after polymerization since ferricyanide reacted with The publication costs of this article were defrayed in part by page charge Abbreviations: Chl, chlorophyll(s); PS, photosystem; RC, reaction payment. This article must therefore be hereby marked "advertisement" in center; car, carotenoid(s); pheo, pheophytin(s). accordance with 18 U.S.C. §1734 solely to indicate this fact. *To whom reprint requests should be addressed. 12195 Downloaded by guest on September 24, 2021 12196 Biochemistry: Bumann and Oesterhelt Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 92 (1995) the polymerization reagents. The embedded PSII were ori- known cofactors of the donor side (41). In their absence the ented in a home-built linear dichroism cuvette by compressing electron transfer from Z to P680+ is inactive (42, 43). This the gels in one direction by a factor of 1.5 and expanding them inactivation is reversible since addition of CaC12 restores full in another direction. The dimension of the gels did not change activity. However, illumination under these conditions leads to in the direction of the optical path (9 mm). Isotropic spectra an irreversible loss of the water-splitting activity that cannot be showed no differences to PSII in solution, indicating that the restored by the addition of CaC12. A comparison of the pigments were not distorted by the embedding procedure. light-saturation behavior of intact and partially inhibited PSII Spectra with linearly polarized light (parallel to the direction revealed that only the light-saturated activity decreases while of compression or expansion) and comparison with published the light intensity necessary for 50% saturation is not affected spectra of other PSII core complexes (34,35) revealed that our (Fig. 1). This indicates that the inhibition is caused by a block PSII was similarly oriented with their plane corresponding to of the electron transfer while the energy transfer from the the former membrane plane parallel to the direction of the antenna to P680 is not affected. expansion. The maximum dichroic ratio (absorbance differ- To further characterize the defective electron transfer we ence between the two light polarizations divided by the measured flash-induced absorption changes of intact and isotropic absorbance) was 0.2-0.3 at 687 nm depending on the partially inhibited PSII in the absence of Ca2+ and Cl- (Fig. 2). sample. Linear dichroism bleaching spectra were measured Under these conditions the fast reduction of P680+ by Z is after illumination of the gels at 10°C. blocked (42, 43). Both samples exhibited an absorption in- Water-splitting activity was measured as oxygen evolution crease at 820 nm, which decayed multiphasically with a dom- with a Clarke-type electrode in 20 mM morpholineethanesul- inant lifetime of 500-600 ,us. This signal can be assigned to fonic acid/KOH, pH 6.5/2 mM ferricyanide/50 mM CaCl2 at long-living Chl cation radicals that are probably slowly reduced 20°C with light from a diaprojector filtered by a Schott RG630 by electron back flow from QA- (44, 45). Both samples filter. The maximum activity was 1000-1200 ,umol of 02 (mg generated a similar amount of long-living cations, indicating of Chl)-1h-1. Light saturation was measured by varying the that the primary charge separation from P680 to the primary light intensity with neutral glass filters (6.5%, 12.5%, 27%, quinone is- still intact after partial inhibition of the water- 48%, 68% transmission in the range 660-690 nm). During a splitting activity. The loss ofwater-splitting activity is therefore period of several hours the light intensity of the diaprojector due to an irreversible damage of the donor side in agreement varied by up to 5%. Therefore, we measured the light intensity with earlier results (6, 7, 10-14).