Objective
One of the most intriguing questions in biological and biophysical research is still how proteins are spatially organized in membranes and subsequently how the organization influences the biological function of a protein in particular and of the organism in general. Also for photosynthetic organisms the membrane organization of the various photosynthetic components is far from being understood. One of the simplest photosynthetic organisms are purple bacteria. Thus they were widely used as a model system in order to understand the underlying principles of the photosynthetic process. For the photosynthetic apparatus of purple bacteria, which mostly consists of the light-harvesting complexes (LH) 2 (3), LH2 and the reaction centre (RC), some elaborated models have been proposed. But for our understanding of the photosynthetic process not only the actual organization of the pigment-protein complexes in the membrane is crucial, but also which parameters actually influence the organization of the complexes with respect to each other.
The objective of the proposed project is therefore to elucidate the underlying mechanisms for the organization in the photosynthetic membrane in order to contribute to a better understanding of the photosynthetic process in general and of membrane organization in particular. We will investigate the research objective by reconstituting the components of the photosynthetic apparatus of purple bacteria in model membranes and study the organisation and dynamics in the membrane as a function of light conditions, protein concentration, membrane composition, presence of additional membrane components and temperature. For our studies we want to take advantage of the technical progress in the single-molecule field.
Fields of science
Call for proposal
FP6-2002-MOBILITY-11
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Funding Scheme
ERG - Marie Curie actions-European Re-integration GrantsCoordinator
BAYREUTH
Germany