Joint studies on the nuclear-encoded photosystem genes.

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This research project was planned for promoting the international joint studies by the plant physiologists of Japan (five scientists mentioned above), US (Prof. Anastasios Melis, University of California, Berkeley), and Germany (Prof.Ralf Oelmueller, Friedrich-Schiller Universitaet, Jena) on the biogenesis of photosystem complexes in higher plants and algae. During the period supported by the grant, 21 scientists in total have visited the laboratories one another and stayed there for the total days of 148, and performed the cooperative studies. The outcomes of these research are 26 papers published in the journals and books, 17 presentations in the international meetings, and 29 presentations at domestic meetings, and two patent applications. The major scientific findings are as follows ;1, We found that plant photosystem genes have unique promoter architecture and transcription initiation mechanisms for the first time ;2, We showed that the biogenesis of photosystem complexes is subjected to positive feedback regulation by photosynthetic electron flow ;3, The redox regulation of photosystem genes operates not only on mRNA abundance but also on poly-ribosome loading ;4, We developed a set of special LED light sources that excite PSI and PSII alternatively ;5, We revealed that the abundance of chlorophyll b is not so important for the biogenesis of light-harvesting antennas ;6, CAO (chlorophyll-oxygenase) plays important roles in adjusting the antennae size to environmental light strength ;7, We proposed a quite new hypothesis to explain the origin and evolution of chloroplats, based on the phylogenetic analyzes of CAO genes.