ABSTRACT
The plastid DNA of most of higher plants contains 11 Ndh genes homologous to those encoding polypeptides of mitochondrial complex I (NADH dehydrogenase, EC 1.6.5.3) (Ohyama et al. 1986; Shinozaki et al. 1986; Maier et al. 1995). Soon after their discovery, it was found that the Ndh genes are transcribed (Kanno and Hirai 1993; Martínez et al. 1997) and their encoded polypeptides (NDH) were immunoidentified in chloroplasts (Berger et al. 1993; Martín et al. 1996). The thylakoid Ndh complex containing the polypeptide products of plastid Ndh genes was first purified from peas (Burrows et al. 1998) and later from barley (Casano et al. 2000). Subsequently, a number of NDH polypeptides have been identified by proteomics in chloroplastic Ndh complex preparations (Darie et al. 2005; Rumeau et al. 2005; Shimizu et al. 2008; Sirpiö et al. 2009; Suorsa et al. 2009).
