PsaI represents one of three low molecular weight peptides of PSI. Targeted inactivation of the plastid PsaI gene in Nicotiana tabacum has no measurable effect on photosynthetic electron transport around PSI or on accumulation of proteins involved in photosynthesis. Instead, the lack of PsaI destabilizes the association of PsaL and PsaH to PSI, both forming the light-harvesting complex (LHC)II docking site of PSI. These alterations at the LHCII binding site surprisingly did not prevent state transition but led to an increased incidence of PSI-LHCII complexes, coinciding with an elevated phosphorylation level of the LHCII under normal growth light conditions. Remarkably, LHCII was rapidly phosphorylated in DpsaI in darkness even after illumination with far-red light. We found that this dark phosphorylation also occurs in previously described mutants impaired in PSI function or state transition. A prompt shift of the plastoquinone (PQ) pool into a more reduced redox state in the dark caused an enhanced LHCII phosphorylation in DpsaI. Since the redox status of the PQ pool is functionally connected to a series of physiological, biochemical, and gene expression reactions, we propose that the shift of mutant plants into state 2 in darkness represents a compensatory and/or protective metabolic mechanism. This involves an increased reduction and/or reduced oxidation of the PQ pool, presumably to sustain a balanced excitation of both photosystems upon the onset of light.PSI is indisputably the most efficient solar energy converter with a potential quantum efficiency close to 100% (Nelson and Yocum, 2006;Nelson, 2009). It mediates the oxidation of plastocyanin and, subsequently, the reduction of ferredoxin resulting in the production of NADPH. The connection between PSII and PSI in the linear electron transport is provided by the cytochrome b 6 f complex. The electrochemical proton gradient build-up during the light-driven electron transport across the thylakoid membrane provides the proton motive force used for the conversion of ADP to ATP. Besides the linear electron transport, which leads to the production of both ATP and NADPH, PSI is also able to perform cyclic electron transport without the involvement of PSII and resulting solely in the generation of ATP (Yamori and Shikanai, 2016). Two routes of cyclic electron transport exist, the PROTON GRADIENT REGULATION (PGR)5/PGRL1-and the NAD(P)H dehydrogenase (NDH)-dependent pathway providing the possibility to adjust the ATP/NADPH ratio to handle changing metabolic demands and to prevent especially PSI from photoinhibition under challenging light regimes (Munekage et al., 2002;Kramer et al., 2004;Joliot and Johnson, 2011;Suorsa et al., 2012).Although the catalytic core and the function of PSI in cyanobacteria and plants remained very similar since the endosymbiotic event, its structural organization strikingly changed during plant evolution Nelson, 2008, 2009). The size of the entire plant PSI complex increased compared to the cyanobacterial PSI (Jordan et al., 2001;Amun...