Multiple copies of the coding regions for the light-harvesting B800-850 alpha- and beta-polypeptides are present in the Rhodopseudomonas palustris genome.

A reverse-phase HPLC System for isolation of the water insoluble alpha- and beta-polypeptides of the light-harvesting complex II (LH II) of Rhodopseudomonas (Rps.) palustris without employment of any detergent was developed. The material obtained was of high purity and suitable for direct microsequence analysis. Chromatographic analysis could resolve at least two major beta-polypeptides, beta a and beta b, two major alpha-polypeptides, alpha a and alpha b, and two additional minor polypeptides. N-terminal amino acid sequencing shows that the resolved peaks correspond to different polypeptide species and that the minor species have an N-terminal sequence identical to that of the alpha b polypeptide. An oligonucleotide derived from the amino terminal sequence of the alpha a polypeptide was utilized to screen a genomic library from Rps.palustris. Several independent clones have been characterized by Southern blot and nucleotide sequence analysis. We show that Rps.palustris contains at least four different clusters of beta and alpha genes. Two clones contain sequences potentially coding for beta a-alpha a and beta b-alpha b polypeptides; and two additional clones potentially coding for beta and alpha peptides which we named beta c-alpha c and beta d-alpha d, which did not correspond to the major purified polypeptides. In addition to the protein chemistry data, the conservation at the amino acid level and the presence of canonical ribosomal binding sites upstream of each of the identified genes strongly suggest that all four coding regions are expressed.