This text gives a short introduction to the spectroscopy of individual light-harvesting complexes. Spectroscopy is a technique with which it is possible to gain information over the transfer of light into an electrochemical potential by photosynthetic organisms. A general introduction is followed by a discussion of a recent article on the lightharvesting complex 2 of Rhodopseudomonas Acidophila...

Absorption curves have been obtained in the spectral region of 450 to 900 mmicro for the water soluble cell juice of four species of photosynthetic bacteria, Spirillum rubrum (strain S1), Rhodovibrio sp. (strain Gaffron), Phaeomonas sp. (strain Delft), and Streptococcus varians (strains C11 and orig.). These curves all show maxima at 790 and 590 mmicro due to bacteriochlorophyll, whose highest ...

Light harvesting by LH1 and LH2 antenna proteins in the photosynthetic membranes of purple bacteria has been extensively studied in recent years for the fundamental understanding of the energy transfer dynamics and mechanism. Here we report the inhomogeneous structural organization of the LH2 complexes in photosynthetic membranes, giving evidence for the existence of energetically coupled linea...

Genome analyses have revealed that the genomes of non-photosynthetic bacteria including Bacillus subtilis code for proteins similar to the large subunit of RuBisCO (called RuBisCO-like protein (RLP)). This raises a fundamental question as to their functional relationship to photosynthetic RuBisCO. Recently, we identified the RLP of B. subtilis as the 2,3-diketo-5-methylthiopentyl-1-phosphate en...

PAL is a peptidoglycan-associated lipoprotein found in the cell membranes of many Gramnegative bacteria. The presence of PAL has been demonstrated in Escherichia coli and many bacteria. In this paper, we show the presence of a gene coding for a PAL-like protein in C. vinosum, a photosynthetic bacteria and the partial sequence of the PAL gene.

A major route for hydrogen production by purple photosynthetic bacteria is biological nitrogen fixation. Nitrogenases reduce atmospheric nitrogen to ammonia with the concomitant obligate production of molecular hydrogen. However, hydrogen production in the context of nitrogen fixation is a rather inefficient process because about 75% of the reductant consumed by the nitrogenase is used to gener...