Crystal structure of plant photosystem I

Adam Ben-Shem, Felix Frolow and Nathan Nelson ()
Additional contact information
Adam Ben-Shem: The George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel Aviv University
Felix Frolow: The George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel Aviv University
Nathan Nelson: The George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel Aviv University

Nature, 2003, vol. 426, issue 6967, 630-635

Abstract: Abstract Oxygenic photosynthesis is the principal producer of both oxygen and organic matter on Earth. The conversion of sunlight into chemical energy is driven by two multisubunit membrane protein complexes named photosystem I and II. We determined the crystal structure of the complete photosystem I (PSI) from a higher plant (Pisum sativum var. alaska) to 4.4 Å resolution. Its intricate structure shows 12 core subunits, 4 different light-harvesting membrane proteins (LHCI) assembled in a half-moon shape on one side of the core, 45 transmembrane helices, 167 chlorophylls, 3 Fe–S clusters and 2 phylloquinones. About 20 chlorophylls are positioned in strategic locations in the cleft between LHCI and the core. This structure provides a framework for exploration not only of energy and electron transfer but also of the evolutionary forces that shaped the photosynthetic apparatus of terrestrial plants after the divergence of chloroplasts from marine cyanobacteria one billion years ago.

Date: 2003
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature02200 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:426:y:2003:i:6967:d:10.1038_nature02200

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature02200

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().