The technique of protein A-gold immunoelectron microscopy was used to determine the distributions of two photosynthetic complexes in the thylakoid membranes of the diatom Phaeodactylum tricornutum. The fucoxanthin-chlorophyll a/c light-harvesting complex, believed to be associated with photosystem II, was found to be equally distributed among appressed and unappressed membranes, whereas photosystem I was slightly more concentrated in the latter. These results suggest that in diatoms, the two photosystems and their associated light-harvesting complexes are essentially equally distributed on the two types of membranes, in marked contrast to the lateral heterogeneity observed in higher plants and green algae. Furthermore, it was expected that in P. tricornutum, the nuclear-coded proteins of the fucoxanthin-chlorophyll a/c light-harvesting complex would be present in the vesicles of the periplastidal reticulum, which were postulated to be involved in protein transport into chloroplasts. Immunolabelling results, however, indicated that these proteins were absent from the periplastidal vesicles.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.60095 |
| Date | January 1990 |
| Creators | Pyszniak, Andrew M. (Andrew Michael) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Science (Department of Biology.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001235371, proquestno: AAIMM67839, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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