Abstract
The effect of carotenoids on the assembly of LH2 complex in cells of the purple nonsulfur bacterium Rhodoblastus acidophilus was investigated. For this purpose, the bacterial culture was cultivated with an inhibitor of carotenoid biosynthesis — 71 µM diphenylamine (DPA). The inhibitor decreased the level of biosynthesis of the colored carotenoids in membranes by ~58%. It was found that a large amount of phytoene was accumulated in them. This carotenoid precursor was bound nonspecifically to LH2 complex and did not stabilize its structure. Thermostability testing of the isolated LH2 complex together with analysis of carotenoid composition revealed that the population of this complex was heterogeneous with respect to carotenoid composition. One fraction of the LH2 complex with carotenoid content around 90% remains stable and was not destroyed under heating for 15 min at 50°C. The other fraction of LH2 complex containing on average less than one molecule of carotenoid per complex was destroyed under heating, forming a zone of free pigments (and polypeptides). The data suggest that a certain part of the LH2 complexes is assembled without carotenoids in cells of the nonsulfur bacterium Rbl. acidophilus grown with DPA. These data contradict the fact that the LH2 complex from nonsulfur bacteria cannot be assembled without carotenoids, but on the other hand, they are in good agreement with the results demonstrated in our earlier studies of the sulfur bacteria Allochromatium minutissimum and Ectothiorhodospira haloalkaliphila. Carotenoidless LH2 complex was obtained from these bacteria with the use of DPA (Moskalenko, A. A., and Makhneva, Z. K. (2012) J. Photochem. Photobiol., 108, 1–7; Ashikhmin, A., et al. (2014) Photosynth. Res., 119, 291–303).
Similar content being viewed by others
Abbreviations
- BChl:
-
bacteriochlorophyll
- DM:
-
dodecyl-ß-D-maltopyranoside
- DPA:
-
diphenylamine
- DPA sample (membrane, complex):
-
sample obtained from cells grown with 71 µM DPA
- LH:
-
light harvesting
- RC:
-
reaction center
References
Hu, X. C., Ritz, T., Damjanovic, A., Autenrieth, F., and Schulten, K. (2002) Photosynthetic apparatus of purple bacteria, Q. Rev. Biophys., 35, 1–62.
Moskalenko, A. A., and Erokhin, Yu. E. (1978) Investigation of light-harvesting complex Rhodopseudomonas sphaeroides, FEBS Lett., 87, 122–124.
Erokhin, Yu. E., and Moskalenko, A. A. (1973) Characterization of the proteins of the Chromatium pigment–lipoprotein complexes (number of chains and molecular weights), Dokl. Akad. Nauk SSSR, 212, 495–498.
Prince, S. M., Papiz, M. Z., Freer, A. A., Mc Dermott, G., Hawthornthwaite-Lawless, A. M., Cogdell, R. J., and Isaacs, N. W. (1997) Apoprotein structure in the LH2 complex from Rhodopseudomonas acidophila strain 10050: modular assembly and protein pigment interactions, J. Mol. Biol., 268, 412–423.
Papiz, M. Z., Prince, S. M., Howard, T., Cogdell, R. J., and Isaacs, N. W. (2003) The structure and thermal motion of the B800–850 LH2 complex from Rps. acidophila at 2.0 Å resolution and 100 K: new structural features and functionally relevant motions, J. Mol. Biol., 326, 1523–1538.
Prince, S. M., Howard, T. D., Myles, D. A., Wilkinson, C., Papiz, M. Z., Freer, A. A., Cogdell, R. J., and Isaacs, N. W. (2003) Detergent structure in crystals of the integral membrane light-harvesting complex LH2 from Rhodopseudomonas acidophila strain 10050, J. Mol. Biol., 326, 307–315.
Gall, A., Henry, S., Takaichi, S., Bruno, R., and Cogdell, R. J. (2005) Preferential incorporation of coloredcarotenoids occurs in the LH2 complexes from non-sulfur purple bacteria under carotenoid-limiting conditions, Photosynth. Res., 86, 25–35.
Hunter, C. N. (1995) in Anoxygenic Photosynthetic Bacteria (Blankenship, R. E., Madigan, M. T., and Bauer, C. E., eds.) Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, pp. 473–501.
Takaichi, S. (2008) in The Purple Phototrophic Bacteria (Hunter, C. N., Daldal, F., Thurnauer, M. C., and Beatty, J. T., eds.) Springer, Dordrecht, pp. 97–117.
Garcia-Asua, G., Cogdell, R. J., and Hunter, C. N. (2002) Functional assembly of the foreign carotenoid lycopene into the photosynthetic apparatus of Rhodobacter sphaeroides, achieved by replacement of the native 3-step, phytoene desaturase with its 4-step counterpart from Erwinia herbicola, Mol. Microbiol., 44, 233–244.
Davidson, E., and Cogdell, R. J. (1981) The polypeptide composition of the B850 light-harvesting pigment–protein complex from Rhodopseudomonas sphaeroides R 26.1, FEBS Lett., 132, 81–84.
Bartley, G. E., and Scolnik, P. A. (1989) Carotenoid biosynthesis in photosynthetic bacteria. Gene characterization of the Rhodobacter capsulatus CrtI protein, J. Biol. Chem., 264, 13109–13113.
Jones, M. R., Fowler, G. J., Gibson, L. C., Grief, G. G., Olsen, J. D., Crielaard, W., and Hunter, C. N. (1992) Mutants of Rhodobacter sphaeroides lacking one or more pigment–protein complexes and complementation with reaction center, LH1, and LH2 genes, Mol. Microbiol., 6, 1173–1184.
Lang, H. P., Cogdell, R. J., Gardiner, A. T., and Hunter, C. N. (1994) Early steps in carotenoid biosynthesis: sequences and transcriptional analysis of the crtI and crtB genes of Rhodobacter sphaeroides and overexpression and reactivation of crtI in Escherichia coli and R. sphaeroides, J. Bacteriol., 176, 3859–3869.
Lang, H. P., and Hunter, C. N. (1994) The relationship between carotenoid biosynthesis and the assembly of the light-harvesting LH2 complex in Rhodobacter sphaeroides, Biochem. J., 298, 197–205.
McDermot, G., Prince, S. M., Freer, A. A., Hawthornthwaite-Lawless, A. M., Papiz, M. Z., Cogdell, R. J., and Isaacs, N. W. (1995) Crystal structure of an integral membrane light-harvesting complex from photosynthetic bacteria, Nature, 374, 517–521.
Cohen-Bazire, G., and Stanier, R. Y. (1958) Inhibition of carotenoid synthesis in photosynthetic bacteria: specific inhibition of carotenoid synthesis in a photosynthetic bacterium and its physiological consequences, Nature, 181, 250–252.
Fuller, R. C., and Anderson, L. C. (1958) Suppression of carotenoid synthesis, Nature, 181, 252–254.
Brill, C. (1963) Studies on bacterial chromatophores. II. Energy transfer and photooxidative bleaching of bacteriochlorophyll in relation to structure in normal and carotenoid-depleted Chromatium, Biochim. Biophys. Acta, 66, 50–60.
Moskalenko, A. A., Britton, G., Connor, A., Young, A., and Toropygina, O. A. (1991) Carotenoid content in chromatophores and pigment–protein complexes isolated from the cells of Chromatium minutissimum grown in the presence of diphenylamine, Biol. Membr. (Moscow), 8, 249–260.
Moskalenko, A. A., and Makhneva, Z. K. (2012) Lightharvesting complexes from purple sulfur bacteria Allochromatium minutissimum assembled without carotenoids, J. Photochem. Photobiol., 108, 1–7.
Ashikhmin, A., Makhneva, Z., and Moskalenko, A. (2014) The LH2 complexes are assembled in the cells of purple sulfur bacterium Ectothiorhodospira haloalkaliphila with inhibition of carotenoid biosynthesis, Photosynth. Res., 119, 291–303.
Goodwin, T. W., and Osman, H. G. (1953) Studies in carotenogenesis. General cultural conditions controlling carotenoid (spirilloxanthin) synthesis in the photosynthetic bacterium Rhodospirillum rubrum, Biochem. J., 53, 541–546.
Britton, G., Singh, R. K., Goodwin, T. W., and Ben-Aziz, A. (1975) The carotenoids of Rhodomicrobium vannielii (Rhodospirillaceae) and the effect of diphenylamine on the carotenoid composition, Phytochemistry, 14, 2427–2433.
Bramley, P. M. (1993) in Carotenoids in Photosynthesis (Young, A., and Britton, G., eds.) Chapmann and Hall, London, pp. 127–159.
Pfenning, N. (1969) Rhodopseudomonas acidophila, sp.n., a new species of budding purple nonsulfur bacteria, J. Bacteriol., 99, 597–602.
Moskalenko, A. A., and Erokhin, Yu. E. (1974) Isolation of pigment lipoprotein complexes from purple photosynthetic bacteria by preparative electrophoresis in polyacrylamide gel, Mikrobiologiya, 43, 654–658.
Moskalenko, A. A., Makhneva, Z. K., Fiedor, L., and Scheer, H. (2005) Effects of carotenoid inhibition on the photosynthetic RC—LH1 complex in purple sulfur bacterium Thiorhodospira sibirica, Photosynth. Res., 86, 71–80.
Moskalenko, A. A., and Erokhin, Yu. E. (1981) The Structural Role of Carotenoids in the Organization of Pigment–Protein Complexes from Purple Photosynthetic Bacteria [in Russian], ONTI, Pushchino.
Moskalenko, A. A., and Karapetyan, N. V. (1996) Structural role of carotenoids in photosynthetic membranes, Z. Naturforsch., 51, 763–771.
Makhneva, Z., Bolshakov, M., and Moskalenko, A. (2008) Heterogeneity of carotenoid content and composition in LH2 of the sulfur purple bacterium Allochromatium minutissimum grown under carotenoid-biosynthesis inhibition, Photosynth. Res., 98, 633–641.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Original Russian Text © M. A. Bol’shakov, A. A. Ashikhmin, Z. K. Makhneva, A. A. Moskalenko, 2015, published in Biokhimiya, 2015, Vol. 80, No. 9, pp. 1420–1430.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Bol’shakov, M.A., Ashikhmin, A.A., Makhneva, Z.K. et al. Peripheral light-harvesting LH2 complex can be assembled in cells of nonsulfur purple bacterium Rhodoblastus acidophilus without carotenoids. Biochemistry Moscow 80, 1169–1177 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1134/S0006297915090072
Received:
Revised:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1134/S0006297915090072