0000000000064472
AUTHOR
Rajiv Harimoorthy
Ubiquitous Structural Signaling in Bacterial Phytochromes
The phytochrome family of light-switchable proteins has long been studied by biochemical, spectroscopic and crystallographic means, while a direct probe for global conformational signal propagation has been lacking. Using solution X-ray scattering, we find that the photosensory cores of several bacterial phytochromes undergo similar large-scale structural changes upon red-light excitation. The data establish that phytochromes with ordinary and inverted photocycles share a structural signaling mechanism and that a particular conserved histidine, previously proposed to be involved in signal propagation, in fact tunes photoresponse.
Ultrafast structural changes within a photosynthetic reaction centre
Nature <London> / Physical science 589, 310 - 314 (2021). doi:10.1038/s41586-020-3000-7