Lateral heterogeneity of plant thylakoid protein complexes: early reminiscences

Abstract

The concept that the two photosystems of photosynthesis cooperate in series, immortalized in Hill and Bendall's Z scheme, was still a black box that defined neither the structural nor the molecular organization of the thylakoid membrane network into grana and stroma thylakoids. The differentiation of the continuous thylakoid membrane into stacked grana thylakoids interconnected by single stroma thylakoids is a morphological reflection of the non-random distribution of photosystem II/light-harvesting complex of photosystem II, photosystem I and ATP synthase, which became known as lateral heterogeneity.