Research articleUse of Nicotiana tabacum transplastomic plants engineered to express a His-tagged CP47 for the isolation of functional photosystem II core complexes

•Generation of tobacco transplastomic plants engineered to express His-tagged CP47.•Isolation of a functional PSII core complex from C-term His-tag CP47 mutants.•Applicability of a one-step purification method for structural-functional studies.

This work focuses on the development of a molecular tool for purification of Photosystem II (PSII) from Nicotiana tabacum (L.). To this end, the chloroplast psbB gene encoding the CP47 PSII subunit was replaced with an engineered version of the same gene containing a C-terminal His-tag. Molecular analyses assessed the effective integration of the recombinant gene and its expression. Despite not exhibiting any obvious phenotype, the transplastomic plants remained heteroplasmic even after three rounds of regeneration under antibiotic selection. However, the recombinant His-tagged CP47 protein associated in vivo to the other PSII subunits allowing the isolation of a functional PSII core complex, although with low yield of extraction. These results will open up possible perspectives for further spectroscopic and structural studies.