We show that salinixanthin, the light-harvesting carotenoid antenna of xanthorhodopsin, can be reconstituted into the retinal protein from Gloeobacter violaceus expressed in E. coli. Reconstitution of gloeobacter rhodopsin with the carotenoid is accompanied by characteristic absorption changes and the appearance of CD bands similar to those observed for xanthorhodopsin that indicate immobilization and twist of the carotenoid in the binding site. As in xanthorhodopsin, the carotenoid functions as a light-harvesting antenna. The excitation spectrum for retinal fluorescence emission shows that ca. 36% of the energy absorbed by the carotenoid is transferred to the retinal. From excitation anisotropy, we calculate the angle between the two chromophores as ca. 50°, similar to that in xanthorhodopsin. The results indicate that gloeobacter rhodopsin binds salinixanthin in a similar way as xanthorhodopsin, and suggest that it might bind a carotenoid also in vivo. In the crystallographic structure of xanthorhodopsin, the conjugated chain of the carotenoid lies on the surface of helices E and F, and the 4-keto-ring is immersed in the protein at van der Waals distance from the ionone ring of the retinal. The 4-keto-ring is in the space occupied by a tryptophan in bacteriorhodopsin, which is replaced by the smaller glycine in xanthorhodopsin and gloeobacter rhodopsin. Specific binding of the carotenoid and its light-harvesting function are eliminated by a single mutation of the gloeobacter protein that replaces this glycine with a tryptophan. This indicates that the 4-keto-ring is critically involved in carotenoid binding, and suggests that a number of other recently identified retinal proteins, from a diverse group of organisms, could also contain carotenoid antenna since they carry the homologous glycine near the retinal.Carotenoids play a major role in light-harvesting in the blue-green region of the spectrum, and in photoprotection, in the complex chlorophyll based photosynthetic apparatus (1-5 ). Their presence in a retinal protein as a light-harvesting component was established only recently, xanthorhodopsin of Salinibacter ruber being the first example of such a complex (6). The retinal-based light-driven proton pump of the archaea, bacteriorhodopsin (7), does not contain † This work was supported in part by grants from the National Institutes of Health (GM29498), the Department of Energy

In previous work we reconstituted salinixanthin, the C40-carotenoid acyl glycoside that serves as a light-harvesting antenna to light-driven proton pump xanthorhodopsin, into a different protein, gloeobacter rhodopsin expressed in E. coli, and demonstrated that it transfers energy to the retinal chromophore (Imasheva et al. 2009. Biochemistry 48, 10948). The key to binding of salinixanthin was the accommodation of its ring near the retinal β-ionone ring. Here we examine two questions: do any of the native Gloeobacter carotenoids bind to gloeobacter rhodopsin, and does the 4-keto group of the ring play a role in binding. There is no salinixanthin in Gloeobacter violaceous, but a simpler carotenoid, echinenone, also with a 4-keto group that lacks the acyl glycoside, is present in addition to β-carotene and oscillol. We show that β-carotene does not bind to gloeobacter rhodopsin, but its 4-keto derivative, echinenone, does and functions as a light-harvesting antenna. This indicates that the 4-keto group is critical for the carotenoid binding. Further evidence for this is that salinixanthol, an analogue of salinixanthin in which the 4-keto group is reduced to hydroxyl, does not bind and is not engaged in energy transfer. According to the crystal structure of xanthorhodopsin, the ring of salinixanthin in the binding site is turned out of the plane of the polyene conjugated chain. Similar conformation is expected for echinenone in the gloeobacter rhodopsin. We suggest that the 4-keto group in salinixanthin and echinenone allows for the twisted conformation of the ring around C6-C7 bond and probably is engaged in interaction that locks the carotenoid in the binding site.

A homologue of type I rhodopsin was found in the unicellular Gloeobacter violaceus PCC7421, which is believed to be primitive because of the lack of thylakoids and peculiar morphology of phycobilisomes. The Gloeobacter rhodopsin (GR) gene encodes a polypeptide of 298 amino acids. This gene is localized alone in the genome unlike cyanobacterium Anabaena opsin, which is clustered together with 14 kDa transducer gene. Amino acid sequence comparison of GR with other type I rhodopsin shows several conserved residues important for retinal binding and H+ pumping. In this study, the gene was expressed in Escherichia coli and bound all-trans retinal to form a pigment (λmax  = 544 nm at pH 7). The pKa of proton acceptor (Asp121) for the Schiff base, is approximately 5.9, so GR can translocate H+ under physiological conditions (pH 7.4). In order to prove the functional activity in the cell, pumping activity was measured in the sphaeroplast membranes of E. coli and one of Gloeobacter whole cell. The efficient proton pumping and rapid photocycle of GR strongly suggests that Gloeobacter rhodopsin functions as a proton pumping in its natural environment, probably compensating the shortage of energy generated by chlorophyll-based photosynthesis without thylakoids.

Gloeobacter rhodopsin (GR) is a light-driven proton-pump protein similar to bacteriorhodopsin (BR), found in Gloeobacter violaceus PCC 7421, a primitive cyanobacterium. In this paper, structural changes of GR following retinal photoisomerization are studied by means of low-temperature Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy. The initial motivation was to test our hypothesis that proton-pumping rhodopsins possess strongly hydrogen-bonded water molecules in the active center. Water O-D stretching vibrations at <2400 cm(-1) in D(2)O have been regarded as coming from such strongly hydrogen-bonded water, and there is a strong correlation between the proton-pumping activity and the presence of such water molecule. Since GR pumps protons, we expected that GR also possesses strongly hydrogen-bonded water molecule(s), and the FTIR results clearly show that this is indeed the case. In addition, another unexpected finding was gained from the frequency region of protonated carboxylic acids in the GR(K) minus GR spectra at 77 K, where we observed the unique bands of a protonated carboxylic acid at 1735 (+)/1730 (-) cm(-1). Comprehensive mutation study revealed that the vibrational bands originate from the carboxylic C=O stretch of Glu132 at the position corresponding to Asp96 in BR. Glu132 presumably functions as an internal proton donor for the retinal Schiff base, but they may be located far apart (ca. 12 A in BR). The present study demonstrates the long-range structural changes of GR along the proton pathway, even though the protein matrix is frozen at 77 K.

Our study showed that olfactory impairment was correlated with olfactory neuronal population in mice treated with 3-methylindole. The food-finding test would be a useful tool that could be easily performed without special training in the 3-methylindole-treated C57BL6 anosmic mouse model.