All living cells are sounded by a lipid bilayer which forms the cell membrane and separates the aqueous intraand extra cellular compartments. The lipid bilayer itself creates a five nanometer thick environment which is hydrophobic at its center and hydrophilic where it meets the bounding environments (Fig1). As throughout the rest of the cell, the membrane contains a repertoire of proteins whic...

INTRODUCTION Oxidative damage to lipids was characterized in terms of the nature of the oxidant, the type of lipid, and the severity of the oxidation (Simontacchi et al., 2011). Even though malondialdehyde detection with the thiobarbituric acid reactive substances test (TBARS) is the most currently used assay for the determination of lipid oxidation, it is unspecific since the reaction can be r...

Usually, in vivo light absorption spectra of photosynthetic bacteria are obtained by measuring cell suspensions in glass or quartz cuvettes. In such arrangements, however, the scattering of light by the suspensions as well as sedimentation or even swarming behavior of motile cells (N. Pfennig, Arch. Mikrobiol. 42:90, 1962) may give rise to various errors. The error caused by light scattering in...

Phosphorylation of the major photosynthetic light harvesting antenna proteins by STN7 kinase balances excitation between PSII and PSI. Phosphorylation of such abundant proteins is unique, differing distinctively from conventional tasks of protein kinases in phosphorylation of low abundance proteins in signaling cascades. Excitation balance between PSII and PSI is critical for redox homeostasis ...