Structure of far-red allophycocyanin: stripped down and tuned up for low energy photosynthesis

A diverse subset of cyanobacteria is capable of transiently modifying their photosynthetic machinery in a process known as far-red light photoacclimation to drive photosynthesis with less energetic photons (700 nm - 800 nm). To achieve this all the main light-driven components of the photosynthetic apparatus, including their allophycocyanin antenna, are replaced with red-shifted paralogues. Recent studies based on the structure of an incomplete complex provided some insights into the tuning of the far-red phycobiliproteins. Here, we solved the structure of the intact bicylindrical allophycocyanin complex from the cyanobacterium Chroococcidiopsis thermalis PCC 7203 at a resolution of 2.61 Å determined by Cryo-electron microscopy single particle analysis. A comparison between far-red and white light allophycocyanin cores provides insight on the evolutionary adaptations needed to optimize excitation energy transfer in the far-red light adapted photosynthetic apparatus. The reduction in antenna size in far-red photosynthesis, suggests a need to optimize membrane packing to increase the number of photosystems, while the wider spread in the absorption range of the bilins suggests faster and more efficient excitation energy transfer to far-red Photosystem II by limiting backflow of excitation from the reaction centres to the far-red bilin pigments.