Phosphorylation of light-harvesting antenna proteins redirects absorbed light energy between reaction centres of photosynthetic membranes. But how? A generally-accepted explanation is that electrostatic forces drive the more negatively-charged, phosphorylated antenna between membrane domains that differ in surface charge. But in structural studies on soluble phosphoproteins, phosphorylated amino acid side chains are seen to have specific effects on molecular recognition, by ligand blocking or by intramolecular interactions which alter protein structure. These studies suggest alternative mechanisms for phosphorylation in control of pairwise protein-protein interactions in biological membranes, and in photosynthesis it therefore appears that the surface charge model is only one possible interpretation.

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