ArticlePlant physiology2008
Protein diffusion and macromolecular crowding in thylakoid membranes.
Article in Plant physiology, 2008. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 59 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
59 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 129 citations in OpenAlex.
- Macromolecular Crowding in Cytoplasm and Cellular Organelles.Sub-cellular biochemistry · 2025Pooled it
- From proton microdomains to protein migration: hypothesis for ΔpH-controlled PSII relocation.Photosynthesis research · 2026Article
- Proton motive force partitioning links energy and redox balance to photoprotection and carbon gain.Frontiers in plant science · 2026Review
- Thylakostasis: key factors in thylakoid membrane organization with emphasis on biogenesis and remodeling proteins in vascular plants.Plant & cell physiology · 2025Review
- Membranous translation platforms in the chloroplast of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii.Plant physiology · 2025Article
- Structure, biogenesis, and evolution of thylakoid membranes.The Plant cell · 2024Review
- Lighting the way: Compelling open questions in photosynthesis research.The Plant cell · 2024Article
- Structure, function, and assembly of PSI in thylakoid membranes of vascular plants.The Plant cell · 2024Review
- Hydrophobic Mismatch in the Thylakoid Membrane Regulates Photosynthetic Light Harvesting.Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2024Article
- Saturating growth rate against phosphorus concentration explained by macromolecular allocation.mSystems · 2023Article
- Biogenesis of a bacterial metabolosome for propanediol utilization.Nature communications · 2022Article
- Saturating relationship between phytoplankton growth rate and nutrient concentration explained by macromolecular allocation.Current research in microbial sciences · 2022Article
- Modeled temperature dependencies of macromolecular allocation and elemental stoichiometry in phytoplankton.Computational and structural biotechnology journal · 2021Article
- Engineering Chloroplasts for High-Level Constitutive or Inducible Transgene Expression.Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) · 2021Review
- Fast Diffusion of the Unassembled PetC1-GFP Protein in the Cyanobacterial Thylakoid Membrane.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Article
- A brief history of how microscopic studies led to the elucidation of the 3D architecture and macromolecular organization of higher plant thylakoids.Photosynthesis research · 2020Review
- Atomic Force Microscopy Visualizes Mobility of Photosynthetic Proteins in Grana Thylakoid Membranes.Biophysical journal · 2020Article
- A Mechanistic Model of Macromolecular Allocation, Elemental Stoichiometry, and Growth Rate in Phytoplankton.Frontiers in microbiology · 2020Article
- Clustering and dynamics of crowded proteins near membranes and their influence on membrane bending.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2019Article
- Whole-Cell Models and Simulations in Molecular Detail.Annual review of cell and developmental biology · 2019Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
The photosynthetic light reactions of green plants are mediated by chlorophyll-binding protein complexes located in the thylakoid membranes within the chloroplasts. Thylakoid membranes have a complex structure, with lateral segregation of protein complexes into distinct membrane regions known as the grana and the stroma lamellae. It has long been clear that some protein complexes can diffuse between the grana and the stroma lamellae, and that this movement is important for processes including membrane biogenesis, regulation of light harvesting, and turnover and repair of the photosynthetic complexes. In the grana membranes, diffusion may be problematic because the protein complexes are very densely packed (approximately 75% area occupation) and semicrystalline protein arrays are often observed. To date, direct measurements of protein diffusion in green plant thylakoids have been lacking. We have developed a form of fluorescence recovery after photobleaching that allows direct measurement of the diffusion of chlorophyll-protein complexes in isolated grana membranes from Spinacia oleracea. We show that about 75% of fluorophores are immobile within our measuring period of a few minutes. We suggest that this immobility is due to a protein network covering a whole grana disc. However, the remaining fraction is surprisingly mobile (diffusion coefficient 4.6 +/- 0.4 x 10(-11) cm(2) s(-1)), which suggests that it is associated with mobile proteins that exchange between the grana and stroma lamellae within a few seconds. Manipulation of the protein-lipid ratio and the ionic strength of the buffer reveals the roles of macromolecular crowding and protein-protein interactions in restricting the mobility of grana proteins.
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Registered trials
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