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Site of biosynthesis of a‐tocopherol in spinach chloroplasts
Author(s) -
Soll Jürgen,
Douce Roland,
Schultz Gernot
Publication year - 1980
Publication title -
febs letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.593
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1873-3468
pISSN - 0014-5793
DOI - 10.1016/0014-5793(80)80189-x
Subject(s) - physics , humanities , library science , philosophy , computer science
The chloroplast envelope is a continuous boundary of two osmiophilic membranes and has an important role in galactolipid synthesis ( 11. It was interesting to determine whether the envelope is the site of synthesis of other lipid components in the chloroplast. We have chosen a-tocopherol for these experiments because it represents >40% of the total prenylquinones of the chloroplast (2). The biosynthetic origin of cw-tocoph- erol has been studied extensively by several authors (3-121. In addition, its synthesis in isolated intact spinach chloroplasts has been shown ( 111. Here we demonstrate that the chloroplast envelope membranes catalyse the incorporation of 2 methyl groups from S-adenosylmethionine (SAM) into the aromatic moiety of the cu-tocopherol precursors.