Photosynthetic growth despite a broken Q-cycle

Alizée Malnoë, Francis-André Wollman, Catherine de Vitry () and Fabrice Rappaport ()
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Alizée Malnoë: Institut de Biologie Physico-Chimique, Unité Mixte de Recherche 7141, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique—Université Paris 6, 13 Rue Pierre et Marie Curie
Francis-André Wollman: Institut de Biologie Physico-Chimique, Unité Mixte de Recherche 7141, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique—Université Paris 6, 13 Rue Pierre et Marie Curie
Catherine de Vitry: Institut de Biologie Physico-Chimique, Unité Mixte de Recherche 7141, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique—Université Paris 6, 13 Rue Pierre et Marie Curie
Fabrice Rappaport: Institut de Biologie Physico-Chimique, Unité Mixte de Recherche 7141, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique—Université Paris 6, 13 Rue Pierre et Marie Curie

Nature Communications, 2011, vol. 2, issue 1, 1-6

Abstract: Abstract Central in respiration or photosynthesis, the cytochrome bc1 and b6f complexes are regarded as functionally similar quinol oxidoreductases. They both catalyse a redox loop, the Q-cycle, which couples electron and proton transfer. This loop involves a bifurcated electron transfer step considered as being mechanistically mandatory, making the Q-cycle indispensable for growth. Attempts to falsify this paradigm in the case of cytochrome bc1 have failed. The rapid proteolytic degradation of b6f complexes bearing mutations aimed at hindering the Q-cycle has precluded so far the experimental assessment of this model in the photosynthetic chain. Here we combine mutations in Chlamydomonas that inactivate the redox loop but preserve high accumulation levels of b6f complexes. The oxidoreductase activity of these crippled complexes is sufficient to sustain photosynthetic growth, which demonstrates that the Q-cycle is dispensable for oxygenic photosynthesis.

Date: 2011
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DOI: 10.1038/ncomms1299

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