Light’EM up: structural characterization of light-driven membrane protein complexes by cryogenic electron microscopy

Photosynthesis is probably the most important process for allowing life to develop into the diverse forms we see today. In this process, solar radiation is used to convert CO2 into biomass. From this process, we obtain oxygen to breathe, sources of food (plant biomass), and the potential for clean and sustainable energy. Photosystem II (PSII) – a key enzyme in photosynthesis –, is a protein complex located in the thylakoid membrane of photosynthetic organisms. PSII and its light-harvesting antennae capture light energy, driving a charge separation process, which leads to the extraction of electrons from water molecules, forming and releasing molecular oxygen. A PSII dimer is composed of more than 20 unique proteins and hundreds of cofactors which fine-tune the mechanisms of light-harvesting and water oxidation, and stabilize the whole complex. While the arrangement of most (but not all!) of these proteins and cofactors is known, their dynamics and individual contributions are not yet fully understood. In my thesis work, I took on the challenge of resolving the structure of large protein complexes, such as PSII complexes from various photosynthetic organisms, using a technique called cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM). This PhD dissertation focuses on structurally describing these macromolecular assemblies and how their components (protein, cofactors, and substrate) interact with each other or with their immediate cellular environment. Among the several outcomes of my research on PSII, I would like to highlight the following findings: 1) the usage of digitonin as a detergent to solubilize PSII destroys the catalytic activity and changes LHCII pigment content, among other consequences; 2) PSII does not seem to incorporate chlorophyll (Chl) a molecules with a farnesyl tail, and the Chl tails’ flexibility justifies not resolving the full-length of some of these molecules in PSII structures. We concluded that flexibility may be an advantage to PSII function; 3) cryo-EM is a technique with the potential to reveal information about electron/proton transfer processes within PSII, and provided us with data, for instance, to suggest a pathway for the protonation of QB, the final electron acceptor in PSII. In another project, also using cryo-EM, I studied the structure of the S-layer Deinoxanthin Binding Complex (SDBC), a membrane protein complex from Deinococcus radiodurans. This complex is an essential part of the cell envelope, the outermost barrier of this b