National Scientists Seminar

 

▶ Subject : PHOTOSYSTEM II: A GLOBAL SENSOR TO  
                  MONITOR STRESS ?

▶ Speaker : Dr. Anjana-Jajoo  (Devi Ahilya University, India)

▶ Date : 11:00AM/ 4 (Tues). October/ 2011

▶ Place : #104, Life Science Bldg.

 

In this lecture, I shall be talking about the research work being done in our lab in India. Extensive research has been carried out related to role of anions on photosynthetic electron transport chain. Using several techniques like thermoluminiscence and EPR, we have been able to deduce site of action of several anions on PSII. Photosystem II, is particularly more sensitive to several environmental stresses like high light, high temperature, high salt, drought, etc. The stress is sensed at the level of pigment composition, structural organization, primary photochemistry and the CO2 fixation. In our lab, we focus on stress induced changes in the primary photochemistry and structural reorganizations of PS II. We have tried to study changes in heterogeneity of PS II in response to high temperature and high salt stress. Our recent work is related to low pH induced structural reorganizations in PS II. Low temperature fluorescence measurements and circular dichroism (CD) studies have revealed a low pH induced reorganization of thylakoid membranes, particularly LHCII. Our preliminary work indicates that there is trimer-to-monomer transition of LHC II under low pH conditions which may be responsible for the migration of LHCII to re-distribute the absorbed excitation energy between the 2 photosystems.
 
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