This Article Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in Web of Science Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via CrossRef Citing Articles via Web of Science (50) Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Malkin, S. Articles by Fork, D. C. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Malkin, S. Articles by Fork, D. C. Agricola Articles by Malkin, S. Articles by Fork, D. C.

Articles

Photosynthetic Units of Sun and Shade Plants ¹

Carnegie Institution of Washington, Stanford, California 94305, Department of Plant Biology, Stanford, California 94305

A computer analysis of fluorescence induction curves of leaves treated with 3-(3,4-dichlorophenyl)-1,1 dimethylurea was done for several species. These measurements gave the ratios of the total chlorophyll to photosystem II reaction centers. This communication is a preliminary survey of sun and shade plants and demonstrates a significant variation in this ratio. In the sun plants, the photosynthetic unit sizes (chlorophyll reaction centers) varied between 220 to 480. The shade plants gave numbers mostly in the range between 630 to 940. The computer analysis of the fluorescence data also gave the connectivity parameter of energy transfer between photosynthetic units of photosystem II which varied between 0.2 and 0.5 but did not show any obvious correlation to the photosynthetic unit size.

¹ This work is Carnegie Institution of Washington Contribution 705.