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. 1973 May;70(5):1554–1558. doi: 10.1073/pnas.70.5.1554

Attachment of Chloroplast Polysomes to Thylakoid Membranes in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii

Nam-Hai Chua 1, G Blobel 1, P Siekevitz 1, G E Palade 1
PMCID: PMC433541  PMID: 4514325

Abstract

Treatment of synchronous cultures of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii with chloramphenicol at 4 hr after the beginning of the light phase led to a preferential loss of 70S ribosomes from the 17,000 × gmax supernate. The “lost” 70S ribosomes were found associated with a thylakoid membrane fraction prepared from the 17,000 × gmax pellet. Electron microscopic examinations of this fraction revealed that the 70S ribosomes were bound to the unstacked regions of the thylakoid membranes as polygonal penta- and hexamers. These bound ribosomes were only released by treatment with 500 mM KCl and puromycin, suggesting that both ionic interactions and nascent peptide chains were involved in the ribosome-membrane attachment. Since growth of the thylakoid membranes occurs in the light, it is suggested that bound chloroplast ribosomes function in the synthesis of thylakoid membrane proteins.

Keywords: chloramphenicol, puromycin reaction, electron microscopy, synchronous cultures

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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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