Tóm tắt
The striking structural architecture of thylakoid membranes of higher plant
and some green algal chloroplasts that house the light harvesting and energy
transducing functions of chloroplasts have evoked many hypotheses concerning
the significance of grana. The differentiation of the thylakoids into grana
and stroma membrane regions is a morphological reflection of the non-random
distribution of the photosystems II and I between appressed and non-appressed
membrane domains, which became known as lateral heterogeneity. In this
overview, the first section deals with changing concepts regarding the
distribution of the photosystems between stacked and unstacked thylakoid
domains from a personal historical perspective. The remaining section
describes some functional implications of the lateral separation of most PSII
complexes in appressed membrane regions of grana stacks from PSI complexes,
ATP synthase and auxiliary proteins located in non-appressed membrane domains.
