Photosystem II (PSII) is a large membrane supercomplex involved in the first step of oxygenic photosynthesis. It is organized as a dimer, with each monomer consisting of more than 20 subunits as well as several cofactors, including chlorophyll and carotenoid pigments, lipids, and ions. The isolation of stable and homogeneous PSII supercomplexes from plants has been a hindrance for their deep structural and functional characterization. In recent years, purification of complexes with different antenna sizes was achieved with mild detergent solubilization of photosynthetic membranes and fractionation on a sucrose gradient, but these preparations were only stable in the cold for a few hours. In this work, we present an improved protocol to obtain plant PSII supercomplexes that are stable for several hours/days at a wide range of temperatures and can be concentrated without degradation. Biochemical and spectroscopic properties of the purified PSII are presented, as well as a study of the complex solubility in the presence of salts. We also tested the impact of a large panel of detergents on PSII stability and found that very few are able to maintain the integrity of PSII. Such new PSII preparation opens the possibility of performing experiments that require room temperature conditions and/or high protein concentrations, and thus it will allow more detailed investigations into the structure and molecular mechanisms that underlie plant PSII function.
Photosystem II (PSII)2 is the first complex involved in oxygenic photosynthesis. By using light energy, PSII is capable of extracting electrons from water and starting an electron transport chain that finally reduces carbon into organic matter through the Calvin-Benson cycle. This process sustains the vast majority of life on earth and produces the molecular O 2 necessary for aerobic metabolism.PSII is a large membrane supercomplex composed of several protein subunits and cofactors (chlorophylls and carotenoid pigments, lipids, and ions). The supercomplex is organized in a dimeric form, with each monomer consisting of more than 20 subunits organized in two moieties: the core complex and the antenna system. The core complex is the only part well conserved among all oxygenic photosynthetic organisms (1). Conversely, the antenna systems are very different, being composed of integral membrane proteins in eukaryotes and peripheral proteins (phycobilisomes) in cyanobacteria (2). Significant differences in the organization of the antenna system can also be found in different eukaryotes as a result of different evolutionary pressures.The core complex is composed of several subunits as follows: (i) D1 and D2, which contain the reaction center P680 and the cofactors of the electron transport chain; (ii) CP47 and CP43, which act as inner antennas by coordinating most of the core chlorophyll a molecules (Chls a), and (iii) several low molecular mass subunits, whose roles for the most part are only little understood (3, 4). Most of the differences between eukaryote and prokaryote core ...