The precipitation of chlorophylls upon lipid and protein globules suspended in an aqueous buffer yields a partial model of photosynthetic membranes. The absorption and fluorescence spectra of the model are investigated as well as the photo-oxidation of the chlorophylls (bleaching) by dissolved oxygen. It is shown that pigment--pigment interactions occur in such systems, by (a) the appearance of absorption bands characteristic of crystalline or highly ordered chlorophyll at high pigment concentrations, (b) the chlorophyll a-type of fluorescence of systems containing chlorophyll a and chlorophyll b where the latter is selectively excited, and (c) the kinetics of photo-oxidation which suggest that chlorophylls can only be bleached when they are dimerized.
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Dinant et al. (1975) studied this question.
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