Crystallization and preliminary crystallographic studies on the extrinsic 23 kDa protein in the oxygen-evolving complex of photosystem II.

The extrinsic 23 kDa protein in the oxygen-evolving complex (OEC23 or PsbP) of photosystem II (PS II) helps to retain calcium and chloride ions, which are essential cofactors for the photosynthetic evolution of oxygen. OEC23 is found in the PS II complex from higher plants and green algae, but not in that from cyanobacteria or other ancestral photosynthetic organisms. In order to elucidate the three-dimensional structure and its molecular evolution, OEC23 was crystallized by the hanging-drop vapour-diffusion technique with PEG 4000 as a precipitant. Diffraction data to a resolution of 2.0 A were collected from a native crystal belonging to space group P2(1)2(1)2, with unit-cell parameters a = 91.36, b = 74.15, c = 52.16 A.