Time-resolved chlorophyll fluorescence studies on photosynthetic mutants of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii: origin of the kinetic decay components.

The room temperature chlorophyll fluorescence decay kinetics of photosynthetic mutants of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii have been measured as a function of Photosystem 2 (PS2) trap closure, DNB-induced quenching at FM, and time-resolved emission spectra. The overall decays have been analyzed in terms of three or four kinetic components where necessary. A comparison of the characteristics of the decay components exhibited by the mutants with the wild-type has been carried out to elucidate the precise origins of the different emissions in relation to the observed pigment-protein complexes. It is shown that a) charge recombination in PS2 is not necessary for the presence of long-lived decay components, b) there are two rapid PS1-associated emissions (τ=30 and 150-200 ps), c) a slow PS1 decay is observed (τ=1.73 ns) in the absence of PS1 reaction centres, d) the two variable components (τ=0.25-1.2 and 0.5-2.2 ns) observed in the wild-type arise from LHC2 and e) a rapid (τ=50-250 ps) decay is associated with the PS2 core antenna (CP3 and CP4). These results show that the intact thylakoid membrane system is too complex to distinguish all of the individual kinetic components.