CP-MAS 13C-NMR dipolar correlation spectroscopy of 13C-enriched chlorosomes and isolated bacteriochlorophyll c aggregates of Chlorobium tepidum: the self-organization of pigments is the main structural feature of chlorosomes.

Magic angle spinning (MAS) NMR dipolar correlation spectroscopy was applied for the first time to a biologically intact system, the light-harvesting chlorosomes of the green photosynthetic bacterium Chlorobium tepidum. The MAS spectra provide evidence that the self-organization of many thousands of bacteriochlorophyll c (BChl c) molecules is the predominant structural feature of the chlorosome. 13C-Enriched chlorosomes were prepared from nonuniformly labeled cultures grown with NaH13CO3 as the main carbon source and from a uniformly 13C-labeled culture grown with NaH13CO3 as the sole carbon source. For the nonuniformly labeled samples, the positions of the chlorin macrocycle originating from C-4 and C-5 of 5-aminolevulinic acid contained > 95% 13C while the remaining positions, which could have originated also from unlabeled acetate, were labeled to approximately 60% with 13C. The 1-D and 2-D MAS data of the labeled chlorosomes, when compared with data on the isolated labeled BChl c aggregated in n-hexane, show that the major component of the MAS signals in the chlorosomes is from BChl c, and only minor signal contributions arise from lipids and proteins. The 13C MAS signals of the BChl c aggregates were fully assigned by MAS 2-D dipolar correlation spectroscopy, using data on monomeric BChl c in CDCl3/CD3OD as reference. The 2(1)-, 3-, 3(2-), 5-, 12(1)-, 13-, and 13(1)-carbons are shifted by 2.5 ppm or more upfield with respect to the solution data.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)