Abstract
Light-harvesting protein LHCB5 is one of the three minor antenna proteins (LHCB4-6) that connect the core (C) of photosystem II (PSII) with strongly (S) and moderately (M) bound peripheral trimeric antennae (LHCIIs), forming a dimeric PSII supercomplex known as C(2)S(2)M(2). Plants lacking LHCB4 and LHCB6 do not form C(2)S(2)M(2), indicating that these minor antenna proteins are crucial for C(2)S(2)M(2) assembly. However, studies on antisense asLhcb5 plants suggest this may not apply to LHCB5. Using mild clear-native PAGE (CN-PAGE) and electron microscopy (EM), we separated and structurally characterized the C(2)S(2)M(2) supercomplex from the Arabidopsis lhcb5 mutant. When compared with wild type (WT), the C(2)S(2)M(2) supercomplexes in the lhcb5 mutant have slightly different positions of S and M trimers and are generally smaller and present in the thylakoid membrane at higher density. Using CN-PAGE, we did not observe any PSII megacomplexes in the lhcb5 mutant, although they are routinely detected by this method in WT. However, we identified the megacomplexes directly in thylakoid membranes via EM, indicating that the megacomplexes are formed but are too labile to be separated. While in WT, both parallel- and non-parallel-associated PSII supercomplexes can be detected in the thylakoid membrane (Nosek et al., 2017, Plant Journal 89, pp. 104-111), only the parallel-associated PSII supercomplexes were found in the lhcb5 mutant. This finding suggests that the formation of non-parallel-associated PSII supercomplexes depends on the presence of LHCB5. The presence of large PSII supercomplexes and megacomplexes, even though less stable, could explain the WT-like photosynthetic characteristics of the lhcb5 mutant.