Size Variability of the Unit Building Block of Peripheral Light-Harvesting Antennas as a Strategy for Effective Functioning of Antennas of Variable Size that Is Controlled in vivo by Light Intensity

---

A. S. Taisova, A. G. Yakovlev, and Z. G. Fetisova^*

Belozersky Research Institute of Physico-Chemical Biology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, 119992 Moscow, Russia; fax: (495) 939-3181; E-mail: zfetisova@genebee.msu.ru; zfetisova@belozersky.msu.ru

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed.

Received November 14, 2013; Revision received December 2, 2013

---

This work continuous a series of studies devoted to discovering principles of organization of natural antennas in photosynthetic microorganisms that generate in vivo large and highly effective light-harvesting structures. The largest antenna is observed in green photosynthesizing bacteria, which are able to grow over a wide range of light intensities and adapt to low intensities by increasing of size of peripheral BChl c/d/e antenna. However, increasing antenna size must inevitably cause structural changes needed to maintain high efficiency of its functioning. Our model calculations have demonstrated that aggregation of the light-harvesting antenna pigments represents one of the universal structural factors that optimize functioning of any antenna and manage antenna efficiency. If the degree of aggregation of antenna pigments is a variable parameter, then efficiency of the antenna increases with increasing size of a single aggregate of the antenna. This means that change in degree of pigment aggregation controlled by light-harvesting antenna size is biologically expedient. We showed in our previous work on the oligomeric chlorosomal BChl c superantenna of green bacteria of the Chloroflexaceae family that this principle of optimization of variable antenna structure, whose size is controlled by light intensity during growth of bacteria, is actually realized in vivo. Studies of this phenomenon are continued in the present work, expanding the number of studied biological materials and investigating optical linear and nonlinear spectra of chlorosomes having different structures. We show for oligomeric chlorosomal superantennas of green bacteria (from two different families, Chloroflexaceae and Oscillochloridaceae) that a single BChl c aggregate is of small size, and the degree of BChl c aggregation is a variable parameter, which is controlled by the size of the entire BChl c superantenna, and the latter, in turn, is controlled by light intensity in the course of cell culture growth.

---

KEY WORDS: photosynthesis, structure and function, peripheral antennas

DOI: 10.1134/S0006297914030110

---