Thermodynamics Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Thermodynamics, including details on enthalpy, entropy, energy transitions.

Theoretical study on the thermodynamic properties of chlorophyll d-peptides coordinating ligand.

Chen M, Cai ZL

School of Biological Sciences, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia.

The chlorophyll d containing cyanobacterium, Acaryochloris marina has provided a model system for the study of chlorophyll replacement in the function of oxygenic photosynthesis. Chlorophyll d replaces most functions of chlorophyll a in Acaryochloris marina. It not only functions as the major light-harvesting pigment, but also acts as an electron transfer cofactor in the primary charge separation reaction in the two photosystems. The Mg-chlorophyll d-peptide coordinating interaction between the amino acid residues and chlorophylls using the latest semi-empirical PM5 method were examined. It is suggested that chlorophyll d possesses similar coordination ligand properties to chlorophyll a, but chlorophyll b possesses different ligand properties. Compared with other studies involving theoretical correlation and our prior experiments, this study suggests that the chlorophyll a-bound proteins will bind chlorophyll d without difficulty when chlorophyll d is available.

Published 8 June 2007 in Biochim Biophys Acta, 1767(6): 603-9.
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