The disappearance of chlorophyll is a visual sign of fruit ripening. Yet, chlorophyll breakdown in fruit has hardly been explored; its non-green degradation products are largely unknown. Here we report the analysis and structure elucidation of colorless tetrapyrrolic chlorophyll breakdown products in commercially available, ripening bananas (Musa acuminata, Cavendish cultivar). In banana peels,...

Changes in the functional organization of chlorophyll occur during light-dependent chlorophyll accumulation in yellow mutants of Chlamydomonas reinhardti£ These changes were studied using single-photon counting techniques to determine the chlorophyll fluorescence decay kinetics at various times after transfer of de-greened cultures to the light. Several different yellow mutants were analyzed: y...

The development of plastid membranes was studied in relation to chlorophyll accumulation in dark-grown barley seedlings of various ages after transfer to light. Quantitative electron microscopy showed that the prolamellar body membranes are reorganized into primary lamellar layers which contain sufficient membranes to support grana formation during 24 h of greening. Structural reorganization of...

Abstract Determination of chlorophyll content as an indirect method of estimating the productivity of vegetation represents a good way to gain an understanding of the photosynthetic regime of plants. Physiological investigations of chlorophyll and carotenoid content in the uppermost internode of several wheat cultivars were carried out at the outset of the flowering phase. The dependence of chl...

The photosystem I reaction center complex, the P-700-chlorophyll a-protein, has been isolated from the photosynthetic membranes of two marine dinoflagellates, Gonyaulax polyedra and Glenodinium sp., by detergent solubilization with Triton X-100. The complexes isolated from the two species were indistinguishable, exhibiting identical absorption properties (400-700 nm) at both room (300 K) and lo...

1. The fluorescence spectra of the alga Porphyridium have been recorded as energy distribution curves for eleven different incident wave lengths of monochromatic incident light between wave lengths 405 and 546 mmicro. 2. In these spectra chlorophyll fluorescence predominates when the incident light is in the blue part of the spectrum which is strongly absorbed by chlorophyll. 3. For blue-green ...

Biogenesis of thylakoid membranes in the conditional chlorophyll b-deficient CD3 mutant of wheat is dramatically altered by relatively small differences in the light intensity under which seedlings are grown. When the CD3 mutant is grown at 400 microE/m2 S (high light, about one-fifth full sunlight) plants are deficient in chlorophyll b (chlorophyll a/b ratio greater than 6.0) and lack or conta...

Remote estimation of chlorophyll-a in turbid and productive estuaries is difficult due to the optical complexity of Case 2 waters. Although recent advances have been obtained with the use of empirical approaches for estimating chlorophyll-a in these environments, the understanding of the relationship between spectral reflectance and chlorophyll-a is based mainly on temperate and subtropical est...

The techniques utilized to extract chlorophyll from plant materials are destructive and based on methods that use organic solvents. This study proposes the non-destructive quantification of chlorophyll and nitrogen concentration using a portable chlorophyll meter (SPAD-502). Further, was possible to establish relationships between chlorophyll fluorescence and SPAD-502 values. This methodology c...

Transcript accumulation and translation of psbA as well as processing of the D1 precursor protein were investigated in relation to chlorophyll availability in vivo in cyanobacterial strains lacking photosystem I (PS I). The psbA transcript level was almost independent of chlorophyll availability and was approximately 3-fold lower in darkness than in continuous light (5 microE m-2 s-1). Upon ill...