Thermoluminescence is a simple technique very useful for studying electron transfer reactions on photosystem II (standard thermoluminescence) or the level of lipid peroxidation in membranes (high temperature thermoluminescence) in photosynthetic organisms. Both techniques were used to investigate the effects produced on Chlorella vulgaris cells by six compounds: the chemical intermediates bromo...

Kiwi fruit displays chlorophyll fluorescence. A physical model was developed to reproduce the observed original fluorescence for the whole fruit, from the emission of the different parts of the kiwi fruit. The spectral distribution of fluorescence in each part of the fruit, was corrected to eliminate distortions due to light re-absorption and it was analyzed in relation to photosystem II-photos...

In the heavy fraction of deoxycholate-treated spinach chloroplasts the chlorophyll aII activity is high and the chlorophyll aI activity is low when no artificial electron donor is added. The addition of the photosystem I donor system N-methyl-phenazonium sulphate plus sodium ascorbate (PMS + Asc) leads to a complete reactivation of the chlorophyll aI reaction. The addition of the photosystem II...

The pigment and acyl lipid composition ofphotochemically active stroma lamellae and inside-out photosystem II vesicles have been investigated. Mechanical disruption followed by phase partitioning in an aqueous two phase system resulted in a clean separation of the photosystems. A qualitative and quantitative determination of the pigment content was achieved using reversed-phase high performance...

We use confocal fluorescence microscopy and fluorescence recovery after photobleaching to show that a specific light signal controls the diffusion of a protein complex in thylakoid membranes of the cyanobacterium Synechococcus sp PCC7942 in vivo. In low light, photosystem II appears completely immobile in the membrane. However, exposure to intense red light triggers rapid diffusion of up to app...

In this paper, a work-in-progress aiming at qualitative modelling of photosynthesis at the mechanistic cellular level by means of Petri nets is described. Presented preliminary results concentrate on modelling and analysis of photosystem II, a crucial component of photosynthesis. By employing qualitative model checking combined with invariant analysis we obtain new insights into electron transf...

We have examined the photophysics of energy migration and trapping in photosystem I by investigating the spectral and temporal properties of the fluorescence from the core antenna chlorophylls as a function of the antenna size. Time-correlated single photon counting was used to determine the fluorescence lifetimes in the isolated P700 chlorophyll a-protein complex and in a mutant of Chlamydomon...

Simultaneous in vivo measurements of prompt fluorescence (PF), delayed fluorescence (DF) and 820-nm reflection (MR) were made to probe response of pea leaves to 40 s incubation at high temperatures (25-50°C). We interpret our observation to suggest that heat treatment provokes an inhibition of electron donation by the oxygen evolving complex. DF, in a time range from several microseconds to mil...

The parameters of barrier distributions on the protein energy landscape in the excited electronic state of the pigment/protein system have been determined by means of spectral hole burning for the lowest-energy pigments of CP43 core antenna complex and CP29 minor antenna complex of spinach Photosystem II (PS II) as well as of trimeric and monomeric LHCII complexes transiently associated with th...