Topology of Photosynthetic Proteins

本项目的总体目标是了解 能量转换膜的功能组织。 的 当前研究的主题是光合作用 膜，特别是反应中心的蛋白质 命名为光系统I。 在能量转换的核心， 这个反应中心是两个大的蛋白质， 叶绿体基因 目前认为，这些大型 膜蛋白由穿膜的 疏水性α-螺旋氨基酸序列， 亲水性部分，其从所述膜的一侧或另一侧突出， 膜的表面。 第一个要解决的问题 实验是：两个大的PSI反应中心是如何 类囊体膜中的蛋白质 这要作 通过使用小的合成多肽， 预测的亲水区的氨基酸序列 蛋白质，以产生肽特异性抗体。 电子 显微镜免疫细胞化学和其他方法将用于 确定膜上蛋白质的拓扑结构。 这些信息将被用作其他信息的基础。 实验方法来研究这些关系 其他光合膜蛋白，以及 推进对能量转换和电子的理解 在膜中运输。

The general objective of this project is to understand the functional organization of energy-transducing membranes. The subject of the immediate investigation is the photosynthetic membrane, and in particular the proteins of the reaction center designated photosystem I. At the heart of energy transduction in this reaction center are two large proteins coded for by chloroplast genes. It is currently believed that these large membrane proteins are comprised of membrane-traversing hydrophobic alpha-helical amino acid sequences connected by hydrophilic portions that protrude from one or the other side of the surface of the membrane. The first question to be addressed experimentally is: How are the two large PSI reaction center proteins disposed in thylakoid membranes? This is to be approached by using small synthetic polypeptides corresponding to amino acid sequences in predicted hydrophilic regions of the protein, to generate peptide-specific antibodies. Electron microscope immunocytochemistry and other methods will be used to determine the topology of the proteins in the membrane. This information is to be used as a basis for other experimental approaches to study the relationships of these proteins to other photosynthetic membrane proteins, and to advance the understanding of energy transduction and electron transport in membranes.