Mobile light-harvesting complex II (LHCII) is implicated in the regulation of excitation energy distribution between Photosystem I (PSI) and Photosystem II (PSII) during state transitions. To investigate how LHCII interacts with PSI during state transitions, PSI was isolated from Arabidopsis thaliana plants treated with PSII or PSI light. The PSI preparations were made using digitonin. Chemical cross-linking using dithio-bis(succinimidylpropionate) followed by diagonal electrophoresis and immunoblotting showed that the docking site of LHCII (Lhcb1) on PSI is comprised of the PSI-H, -L, and -I subunits. This was confirmed by the lack of energy transfer from LHCII to PSI in the digitonin-PSI isolated from plants lacking PSI-H and -L. Digitonin-PSI was purified further to obtain an LHCIIâ
PSI complex, and two to three times more LHCII was associated with PSI in the wild type in State 2 than in State 1. Lhcb1 was also associated with PSI from plants lacking PSI-K, but PSI from PSI-H, -L, or -O mutants contained only about 30% of Lhcb1 compared with the wild type. Surprisingly, a significant fraction of the LHCII bound to PSI in State 2 was not phosphorylated. Cross-linking prior to sucrose gradient purification resulted in copurification of phosphorylated LHCII in the wild type, but not with PSI from the PSI-H, -L, and -O mutants. The data suggest that migration of LHCII during state transitions cannot be explained sufficiently by different affinity of phosphorylated and unphosphorylated LHCII for PSI but is likely to involve structural changes in thylakoid organization.In oxygenic photosynthesis two photosystems, PSI 1 and PSII, work in series to convert light energy into chemical energy. PSI is also involved in cyclic electron transport without the participation of PSII, and this process serves to produce additional ATP and to regulate the transthylakoidal proton gradient (1), but in plants this is a minor part of the electron transport. In linear electron transport, PSI and PSII must operate with the same rate, but natural environmental conditions, such as the quality and quantity of light, are constantly fluctuating, and this may alter the balance between the two photosystems. The two photosystems have different absorption spectra, and therefore a change in light quality may favor one photosystem over the other. However, plants can balance the excitation energy distribution between the two photosystems via a mechanism known as state transitions, which was discovered more than 30 years ago (2-4). If PSII is overexcited relative to PSI, the plastoquinone pool becomes overreduced, and this will activate a kinase that phosphorylates a mobile pool of light-harvesting complex II (LHCII), leading to the lateral movement of LHCII in favor of PSI. This is the so-called "State 2," in which the PSII antenna is smaller and the PSI antenna is larger than in State 1 (5, 6). State 1 is obtained when PSI is preferentially excited, which leads to oxidation of the plastoquinone pool and inactivation of the LHCII kinase. The phosph...