Quantum requirement of photosynthesis in the primarily chlorophyll d containing prokaryote Acaryochloris marina

Abstract

The recently isolated and characterized unicellular photosynthetic prokaryote Acaryochloris marina (Miyashita et al., 1996) contains chlorophylls a, d, and traces of a chlorophyll c-like pigment as well as phycocyanin, a type of allophycocyanin, zeaxanthin and α-carotene, chlorophyll d being the predominant chlorophyll component. Quantum requirement measurements of the photosynthetic oxygen evolution resulted in about 12 quanta for excitation of chlorophylls a and d and 18 for phycocyanin. The data also revealed that these pigments are involved in energy absorption for photosynthetic oxygen evolution. Energy is transferred efficiently and equally well between the chlorophylls. Light absorbed by phycocyanin which is organized in phycobiliprotein aggregates (Marquardt et al., 1997), results in a less efficient energy transfer to the reaction center chlorophylls.