Probing the dynamics of photosynthetic membranes with fluorescence recovery after photobleaching.

In the past few years, there has been remarkable progress in knowledge of the structures and organization of the protein complexes of photosynthetic membranes. However, static structures do not tell the whole story. Photosynthetic membranes, like other biological membranes, are dynamic systems. Recent technological advances are making it increasingly easy to probe the dynamics of photosynthetic membranes using fluorescence recovery after photobleaching. Here we explain the potential and the limitations of the technique.