In Vivo Manipulation of Lipid Composition in Mutants of Chlamydomonas ReinhardtII: A Tool to Study the Roles of Lipids in the Biogenesis of the Photosynthetic Membrane

Photosynthesis in eucaryotic green organism uses solar energy collected by the light-harvesting chlorophyll a/b protein complex associated with photosystem II (LHCII) which is the most abondant membrane protein in chloroplasts binding half of the pigments involved in plant photosynthesis. Each polypeptide organizes a minimum of 12 chlorophylls, 2 carotenoids (Nusberger et al. 1993)(1) and at least two galactolipids (one mono- and one di-galactosyldiacylglycerol) and one phosphatidylglyce-rol (Tremolieres et al. 1994)(2).