Effect of xanthophyll composition on the chlorophyll excited state lifetime in plant leaves and isolated LHCII

Xanthophyll excited states have been implicated by transient absorption and two-photon excitation studies in playing a key role in the regulation of photosynthetic light harvesting via photoprotective energy dissipation. For any proposed quenching mechanism to be effective it must reduce the chlorophyll excited state lifetime from 2 ns to ∼0.5-0.4 ns. In the presented study the effect of xanthophyll composition on the chlorophyll excited state lifetime in Arabidopsis leaves in the light harvesting (Fm) and photoprotective (NPQ) states was determined. The data was compared to the chlorophyll excited state lifetime of native isolated LHCII and CP26 in detergent micelles with varying xanthophyll composition. It was found that although the differences in xanthophyll composition between LHC complexes from various Arabidopsis mutants were sufficient to explain the varying Fm lifetime (and varying PSII efficiency), they were not of a sufficient scale to fully explain the observed differences in the NPQ lifetimes. Only when the LHC complexes were exposed to a low detergent/low pH media, a condition known to mimic the conformational state of LHCII associated with NPQ in vivo, were variations in excited state lifetime large enough to explain the differences observed in leaves. Furthermore, the data reveal that the replacement of lutein by either zeaxanthin or violaxanthin in the internal xanthophyll binding sites of LHCII and CP26 reduces the efficiency of energy dissipation in the photoprotective state in leaves and isolated complexes.