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. 1968 Aug;43(8):1279–1283. doi: 10.1104/pp.43.8.1279

Carotenes and Retinal in Phycomyces Mutants 1

G Meissner 1,2, M Delbruck 1
PMCID: PMC1087007  PMID: 5700021

Abstract

Three different types of β-carotene mutants of Phycomyces have been studied. In 2 mutants (Type I) β-carotene is still the principal carotene but scaled down or up relative to wild type. The carotene mixture of 2 mutants (Type II) consists mainly of phytoene and phytofluene. In Type III (2 mutants) β-carotene is replaced by lycopene.

The examination of the mutants reveals that the receptor pigment is very likely neither β-carotene nor retinal. Transmission spectra through the growing zone of live sporangiophores of 1 of these mutants which contains less than one-thousandth of the β-carotene content of wild type show that the receptor pigment extinction is less than 0.003 at its maximum.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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