Correlation of electronic carotenoid-chlorophyll interactions and fluorescence quenching with the aggregation of native LHC II and chlorophyll deficient mutants

The aggregation dependent correlation between fluorescence quenching and the electronic carotenoid-chlorophyll interactions, ϕCouplingCar S1-Chl, as measured by comparing chlorophyll fluorescence observed after two- and one-photon excitation, has been investigated using native LHC II samples as well as mutants lacking Chl 2 and Chl 13. For native LHC II the same linear correlation between ϕCouplingCar S1-Chl and the fluorescence quenching was observed as previously reported for the pH and Zea-dependent quenching of LHC II [1]. In order to elucidate which carotenoid-chlorophyll pair might dominate this correlation we also investigated the mutants lacking Chl 2 and Chl 13. However, also with these mutants the same linear correlation as for native LHC II was observed. This provides indication that these two chlorophylls play only a minor role for the observed effects. Nevertheless, we also conclude that this does not exclude that their neighboured carotenoids, lutein 1 and neoxanthin, might interact electronically with other chlorophylls close by.