Abstract
THE chloroplasts isolated by Hill1 in the 1930s were capable of rapid rates of oxygen evolution when provided with an artificial electron acceptor (oxidant) but did not retain the ability to assimilate CO2 at rates detectable by the methods then available. Nearly 20 yr later the ability of isolated chloroplasts to fix CO2 was demonstrated by Arnon, Alien and Whatley2 but even then the rates were only 3–6% of those supported by the intact plant. By 1966, when the rates of fixation by chloroplasts isolated in sugar media first matched those of intact leaves3,4, it had been established5,6 that high rates of carbon assimilation were only achieved by chloroplasts with intact envelopes. It is unlikely that all the earlier difficulties were caused by the unintentional isolation of damaged chloroplasts but, except for some early work by Arnon7 (in which chloroplasts were supplemented with cytoplasmic malic enzyme), it has certainly not been possible to show CO2-dependent oxygen evolution by envelope-free chloroplasts8 and rapid rates (comparable with the Hill reaction) have not been previously reported. Such high rates have now been observed in a reconstituted system containing ATP, ferredoxin, NADP (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate), R5P (ribose-5-phosphate), CE (soluble components released from osmotically shocked chloroplasts) and envelope-free chloroplasts.
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References
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WALKER, D., MCCORMICK, A. & STOKES, D. CO2-dependent Oxygen Evolution by Envelope-free Chloroplasts. Nature 233, 346–347 (1971). https://doi.org/10.1038/233346a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/233346a0
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