Requirement for the H phosphoprotein in photosystem II of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii

To dissect the expression of the psbB gene cluster of the Chlamydomonas reinhardtii chloroplast genome and to assess the role of the photosystem II H-phosphoprotein (PSII-H) in the biogenesis and/or stabilization of PSII, an aadA gene cassette conferring spectinomycin resistance was employed for mutagenesis. Disruption of the gene cluster has no effect on the abundance of transcripts of the upstream psbB/T locus. Likewise, interruption of psbB/T and psbH with a strong transcriptional terminator from the rbcL gene does not influence transcript accumulation. Thus, psbB/T and psbH may be independently transcribed, and the latter gene seems to have its own promoter in C. reinhardtii. In the absence of PSII-H, translation and thylakoid insertion of chloroplast PSII core proteins is unaffected, but PSII proteins do not accumulate. Because the deletion mutant also exhibits PSII deficiency when dark-grown, the effect is unrelated to photoinhibition. Turnover of proteins B and C of PSII and the polypeptides PSII protein A and PSII protein D is faster than in wild-type cells but is much slower than that observed in other PSII-deficient mutants of C. reinhardtii, suggesting a peripheral location of PSII-H in PSII. The role of PSII-H on PSII assembly was examined by sucrose gradient fractionation of pulse-labeled thylakoids; the accumulation of high-molecular-weight forms of PSII is severely impaired in the psbH deletion mutant. Thus, a primary role of PSII-H may be to facilitate PSII assembly/stability through dimerization. PSII-H phosphorylation, which possibly occurs at two sites, may also be germane to its role in regulating PSII structure, stabilization, or activity.