Special Issue in CURRENT PROTEIN & PEPTIDE SCIENCE

Guest Editor: Giuseppina Rea

SENSORS AND TRANSDUCERS IN THE PHOTOSYNTHETIC LANDSCAPE

Aims & Scope:

Photosynthesis is a paramount biological process enabling and sustaining aerobic life on Earth. Embedded into asimetrically charged lipid bilayers, individual macromolecular components perform the vital light-harvesting, charge-separation, and water splitting functions to store solar energy in an amenable biochemical form. Acting at micro- and nanoscale levels on femto-picosecond timescale, macromolecular photosynthetic complexes are receiving renewed attention due to the possibility to construct optoelectronic devices and mono- and/or multi-molecular layers of either natural or engineered subcomponents for the development of biosensors, biochips and photovoltaic semiconductors. Actually, in the era of synthetic biology in which sensors and transducers dominate the scene, photosynthetic proteins play as main actors paving the way to their possible exploitation as artificial biomimetics. This special issue aims to provide an updated overview  on the structural and functional features of the most promising protein assemblies suitable for the abovementioned biotechnological applications.

Key words:

Photosynthesis; biosensors; bio-energy; biomimetics; plastoquinones; bacterial RCs; PSII; PSI; LHCs Peridinin; Ferredoxin and FNR; X-rays.

TOPICS: (Click on Titles for PDF Documents)

Editorial

Giuseppina Rea

Structure/function/dynamics of the plastoquinone binding sites

Maya Dimova Lambreva, Daniela Russo, Fabio Polticelli, Viviana Scognamiglio, Amina Antonacci, Veranika Zobnina, Gaetano Campi, Giuseppina Rea

A Comparison between Plant Photosystem I and Photosystem II Architecture and Functioning

Stefano Caffarri, Tania Tibiletti, Robert C. Jennings, Stefano Santabarbara

The unique photophysical properties of Peridinin-Chlorophyll-a-Protein

Donatella Carbonera, Marilena Di Valentin, Riccardo Spezia, Alberto Mezzetti

Regulation of photosynthetic electron transport

Thomas Roach, Anja Krieger-Liszkay

Photosynthetic reaction center proteins in nano-structures

László Nagy, Melinda Magyar, Tibor Szabó, Kata Hajdu, Livia Giotta, Márta Dorogi and Francesco Milano

Light harvesting proteins for solar fuel generation in bioengineered photoelectrochemical cells

Julian Ihssen, Artur Braun, Krisztina Gajda-Schrantz, Linda Thöny-Meyer

The end of the line: Can ferredoxin and ferredoxin NADP(H) oxidoreductase determine the fate of photosynthetic electrons?

Tatjana Goss and Guy Hanke

Controlling photoinduced electron transfer via defects self-organization for novel functional macromolecular systems

G. Campi, G. Ciasca, N. Poccia, A. Ricci, M. Fratini and A. Bianconi