Abstract

A light-harvesting antenna system of red and blue-green algae consists of phycobilisomes and thylakoid membrane: the former which is attached to the latter is a supramolecular unit involving several kinds of phycobiliproteins, as shown in Fig. 1 [1]. In the course of the energy transfer from the initially photoexcited phycobiliprotein to the reaction centers (RC) I and II, fluorescence is emitted from almost every type of pigment and can be used as a probe to examine the mechanism of energy transfer within the pigment system.

© 1984 Optical Society of America