Chlorophyll to Zeaxanthin Energy Transfer in Nonphotochemical Quenching: An Exciton Annihilation-free Transient Absorption Study

Overview

Journal Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A

Specialty Science

Date 2024 Oct 8

PMID 39378097

Authors

Tsung-Yen Lee

Lam Lam

Dhruv Patel-Tupper

Partha Pratim Roy

Sophia A Ma

Henry E Lam

Aviva Lucas-DeMott

Nicholas G Karavolias

Masakazu Iwai

Krishna K Niyogi

Graham R Fleming

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Zeaxanthin (Zea) is a key component in the energy-dependent, rapidly reversible, nonphotochemical quenching process (qE) that regulates photosynthetic light harvesting. Previous transient absorption (TA) studies suggested that Zea can participate in direct quenching via chlorophyll (Chl) to Zea energy transfer. However, the contamination of intrinsic exciton-exciton annihilation (EEA) makes the assignment of TA signal ambiguous. In this study, we present EEA-free TA data using thylakoid membranes, including the wild type and three NPQ mutants (, , and ) generated by CRISPR/Cas9 mutagenesis. The results show a strong correlation between excitation energy transfer from excited Chl Q to Zea S and the xanthophyll cycle during qE activation. Notably, a Lut S signal is absent in the thylakoids which lack zeaxanthin. Additionally, the fifth-order response analysis shows a reduction in the exciton diffusion length (L) from 62 ± 6 nm to 43 ± 3 nm under high light illumination, consistent with the reduced range of exciton motion being a key aspect of plants' response to excess light.

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