Specific role of glycolipids in the regular stacking of membranes reconstituted from thylakoid lipid extracts
Résumé
Chloroplasts contain stacks of flattened photosynthetic membranes (thylakoids) that host the photosynthetic protein complexes. Using neutron diffraction under controlled temperature and humidity, we observe that solid supported films prepared from protein-free thylakoid lipid extracts self-organize as regular bilayer stacks, the only functional supra-molecular organization for photosynthesis. We show that this lamellar order is close to the reversible phase transition from hexagonal (HII) to lamellar (Lα).