Studies of the location and function of isoprenoid quinones in chlorosomes from green sulfur bacteria

The chlorosome antenna of the green sulfur bacterium Chlorobium tepidum essentially consists of aggregated bacteriochlorophyll (BChl) c enveloped in a glycolipid monolayer. Small amounts of protein and the isoprenoid quinones chlorobiumquinone (CK) and menaquinone-7 (MK-7) are also present. Treatment of isolated chlorosomes from Cb. tepidum with sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) did not affect the quinones, demonstrating that these are located in a site which is inaccessible to SDS, probably in the interior of the chlorosomes. About half of the quinones were removed by Triton X-100. The non-ionic character of Triton probably allowed it to extract components from within the chlorosomes. MK-10 in chlorosomes from the green filamentous bacterium Chloroflexus aurantiacus was likewise found to be located in the chlorosome interior. The excitation transfer in isolated chlorosomes from Cb. tepidum is redox-regulated. We found a ratio of BChl c fluorescence intensity under reducing conditions (F-red) to that under oxidizing conditions (F-ox) of approximately 40. The chlorosomal BChl a fluorescence was also redox-regulated. When the chlorosomal BChl c-BChl c interactions were disrupted by 1-hexanol, the BChl c F-red/F-ox ratio decreased to approximately 3. When CK and MK-7 were extracted from isolated chlorosomes with hexane, the BChl c F-red/F-ox ratio also decreased to approximately 3. A BChl c F-red/F-ox ratio of 3-5 was furthermore observed in aggregates of pure BChl c and in chlorosomes from Cfx. aurantiacus which do not contain CK. We therefore suggest that BChl c aggregates inherently exhibit a small redox-dependent fluorescence (F-red/F-ox approximate to 3) and that the large redox-dependent fluorescence observed in chlorobial chlorosomes (F-red/F-ox approximate to 40) is CK-dependent.