TY  - JOUR
AU  - Stingaciu, Laura
AU  - O’Neill, Hugh
AU  - Liberton, Michelle
AU  - Urban, Volker S.
AU  - Pakrasi, Himadri B.
AU  - Ohl, Michael
TI  - Revealing the Dynamics of Thylakoid Membranes in Living Cyanobacterial Cells
JO  - Scientific reports
VL  - 6
SN  - 2045-2322
CY  - London
PB  - Nature Publishing Group
M1  - FZJ-2016-07450
SP  - 19627
PY  - 2016
AB  - Cyanobacteria are photosynthetic prokaryotes that make major contributions to the production of the oxygen in the Earth atmosphere. The photosynthetic machinery in cyanobacterial cells is housed in flattened membrane structures called thylakoids. The structural organization of cyanobacterial cells and the arrangement of the thylakoid membranes in response to environmental conditions have been widely investigated. However, there is limited knowledge about the internal dynamics of these membranes in terms of their flexibility and motion during the photosynthetic process. We present a direct observation of thylakoid membrane undulatory motion in vivo and show a connection between membrane mobility and photosynthetic activity. High-resolution inelastic neutron scattering experiments on the cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 assessed the flexibility of cyanobacterial thylakoid membrane sheets and the dependence of the membranes on illumination conditions. We observed softer thylakoid membranes in the dark that have three-to four fold excess mobility compared to membranes under high light conditions. Our analysis indicates that electron transfer between photosynthetic reaction centers and the associated electrochemical proton gradient across the thylakoid membrane result in a significant driving force for excess membrane dynamics. These observations provide a deeper understanding of the relationship between photosynthesis and cellular architecture.
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
UR  - <Go to ISI:>//WOS:000368778100001
C6  - pmid:26790980
DO  - DOI:10.1038/srep19627
UR  - https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/824954
ER  -