Stefano Capaldi, Zeno Guardini, Daniele Montepietra, Vittorio Flavio Pagliuca, Antonello Amelii, Elena Betti, Chris John, Laura Pedraza-Gonzalez, Lorenzo Cupellini, Benedetta Mennucci, Diane Marie Valerie Bonnet, Antonio Chaves-Sanjuan, Luca Dall’Osto and Roberto Bassi.
Solar radiation is unevenly distributed under natural conditions. When plants grow in shaded environments, they must optimize light harvesting to capture the limited light filtering through the upper leaf layers, which is enriched in far-red wavelengths (≥700 nm).
In this study, we investigated the structural and biophysical determinants of far-red absorption. After generating Arabidopsis mutant lines that are unable to harvest far-red light, we characterized the protein environment responsible for this spectral feature using Cryo-EM and quantum mechanics calculations. These findings offer valuable insights for engineering plants with an optimized absorption spectrum.
