{"id":264,"date":"2025-01-09T13:56:59","date_gmt":"2025-01-09T13:56:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pages.constructor.university\/photocam\/?page_id=264"},"modified":"2025-09-22T18:18:57","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T18:18:57","slug":"project-6","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/pages.constructor.university\/photocam\/persons-involved\/project-6\/","title":{"rendered":"Project 6"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The configurational space of LH complexes from higher plants \u2013 sensing and response to pH changes<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

ICFO \u2013 Institute of Photonic Sciences, Castelldefels, Spain<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Principal Investigator
Prof. Dr. Nicolleta Liguori<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Doctoral Candidate
Gregor Hill<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Project Description:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Plants prevent photodamage by dissipating excess absorbed sunlight as heat through a reversible feedback mechanism called energy-dependent quenching (qE). This process occurs in the photosynthetic membrane, where Light-Harvesting Complexes (LHCs) \u2014 pigment-binding membrane proteins \u2014 play a dual role. Under low light, LHCs harvest light and transfer excitation energy to the sites of photochemistry, while under strong light, a pH drop in the photosynthetic membrane lumen triggers their switch to a different conformation. In this conformation(s), the LHCs dissipate the solar energy absorbed in excess as heat.\u00a0This project combines atomistic and coarse-grained molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, along with MD methods able to explicitly account for pH changes, to investigate how various gene products of the large family of LHCs sense and respond to pH in physiologically relevant conditions<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publications:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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  1. Liguori, Nicoletta, Sara RR Campos, Ant\u00f3nio M. Baptista, and Roberta Croce. “Molecular anatomy of plant photoprotective switches: the sensitivity of PsbS to the environment, residue by residue.” The journal of physical chemistry letters 10, no. 8 (2019): 1737-1742.
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  2. Liguori, Nicoletta, Pengqi Xu, Ivo HM Van Stokkum, Bart Van Oort, Yinghong Lu, Daniel Karcher, Ralph Bock, and Roberta Croce. “Different carotenoid conformations have distinct functions in light-harvesting regulation in plants.” Nature communications 8, no. 1 (2017): 1994.
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  3. Liguori, Nicoletta, Xavier Periole, Siewert J. Marrink, and Roberta Croce. “From light-harvesting to photoprotection: structural basis of the dynamic switch of the major antenna complex of plants (LHCII).” Scientific reports 5, no. 1 (2015): 15661.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The configurational space of LH complexes from higher plants \u2013 sensing and response to pH changes ICFO \u2013 Institute of Photonic Sciences, Castelldefels, Spain Principal InvestigatorProf. Dr. Nicolleta Liguori Doctoral Candidate Gregor Hill Project Description: Plants prevent photodamage by dissipating<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"parent":26,"menu_order":6,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-264","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.constructor.university\/photocam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.constructor.university\/photocam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.constructor.university\/photocam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.constructor.university\/photocam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.constructor.university\/photocam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pages.constructor.university\/photocam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":267,"href":"https:\/\/pages.constructor.university\/photocam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/264\/revisions\/267"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.constructor.university\/photocam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/26"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.constructor.university\/photocam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}