Trivial Excitation Energy Transfer to Carotenoids Is an Unlikely Mechanism for Non-photochemical Quenching in LHCII.

ABSTRACT: Higher plants defend themselves from bursts of intense light via the mechanism of Non-Photochemical Quenching (NPQ). It involves the Photosystem II (PSII) antenna protein (LHCII) adopting a conformation that favors excitation quenching. In recent years several structural models have suggested that quenching proceeds via energy transfer to the optically forbidden and short-lived S ₁ states of a carotenoid. It was proposed that this pathway was controlled by subtle changes in the relative orientation of a small number of pigments. However, quantum chemical calculations of S ₁ properties are not trivial and therefore its energy, oscillator strength and lifetime are treated as rather loose parameters. Moreover, the models were based either on a single LHCII

SUBMITTER: Gray C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8792765 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature