ABSTRACT
Light-activated hydrogen and oxygen evolution as a function of CO2 concentration in helium were measured for the unicellular green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. The concentrations were 58, 30, 0.8 and 0 ppm CO2. The objective of these experiments was to study the differential affinity of CO2/HCO 3 (-) for their respective Photosystem II and Calvin cycle binding sites vis-à-vis photoevolution of molecular oxygen and the competitive pathways of hydrogen photoevolution and CO2 photoassimilation. The maximum rate of hydrogen evolution occurred at 0.8 ppm CO2, whereas the maximum rate of oxygen evolution occurred at 58 ppm CO2. The key result of this work is that the rate of photosynthetic hydrogen evolution can be increased by, at least partially, satisfying the Photosystem II CO2/HCO 3 (-) binding site requirement without fully activating the Calvin-Benson CO2 reduction pathway. Data are presented which plot the rates of hydrogen and oxygen evolution as functions of atmospheric CO2 concentration in helium and light intensity. The stoichiometric ratio of hydrogen to oxygen changed from 0.1 at 58 ppm to approximately 2.5 at 0.8 ppm. A discussion of partitioning of photosynthetic reductant between the hydrogen/hydrogenase and Calvin-Benson cycle pathways is presented.
ABSTRACT
Rat intestinal cellular retinol binding protein II (CRBP II) is an abundant 134-residue protein that binds all-trans-retinol which contains 4 tryptophans in positions 9, 89, 107, and 110. Our ability to express CRBP II in Escherichia coli and to construct individual tryptophan substitution mutants by site-directed mutagenesis has provided a useful model system for studying the fluorescence of a multi-tryptophan protein. Each of the four mutant proteins binds all-trans-retinol with high affinity, although their affinities are less than that of the wild-type protein. Steady-state and time-resolved fluorescence analyses of these proteins indicate that W107 is at the hydrophobic binding site, W110 is in a polar environment, and the remaining two tryptophans are in a hydrophobic environment. Time-resolved fluorescence study indicates that excited-state energy transfer occurs from the hydrophobic tryptophans to W110. The Stern-Volmer analysis with acrylamide of these proteins reveals that static quenching occurs in the W9F mutant protein while others do not. The fluorescence of rat intestinal fatty acid binding protein (I-FABP), a related protein of known X-ray structure, was also studied for comparison. The results of these findings, coupled with those derived from NMR studies and molecular graphics, suggest that CRBP II undergoes minor structural changes in all of the mutant proteins. Since these effects may be cumulative on the protein structure and function, any conclusions derived from higher mutants in this family of proteins must be treated with caution.
