Regulation of thylakoid assembly in response to environment

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The work addresses the adjustment of the photosystem ratio in the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. It is shown that green algae, much like cyanophytes and higher plants, adjust and optimize the ratio of the two photosystems in response to the quality of irradiancxe during growth. Such adjustments are compensation reactions and help C.reinhardtii to retain a quantum efficiency of photosynthesis near the theoretical maximum. The detwection of the operation of a molecular feedback mechanism for the PSI/PSII ratio adjustment in green algae strengthens the notion of the highly conserved nature of this mechanism among probably all oxygen evolving photosynthetic organisms. The work delineates chromatic effects on chlorophyll accumulation in the chloroplasts of C.reinhardtiifrom those pertaining to the regulation of the PSI/PSII ratio. It is shown that different photoreceptors are involved in the regulation of the two phenomena. Findings in this work are expected to serve as the basis of future biochemical and mutagenesis experiments aimed to identify important enzymatic steps in the signal transduction pathway and, thus, it will contribute to the elucidation of the molecular mechanism for the PSI/PSII ratio adjustment in oxygenic photosynthesis.