Investigation of the thylakoid membrane structure by small-angle neutron scattering

The thickness of thylakoid membrane has been determined for the first time by small-angle neutron scattering. It was shown that the membrane thickness depends on the way the sample is prepared. Thylakoids extracted by a standard method have a thickness of 75 Angstrom. Additional washing with extraction medium leads ta the membrane thickness of 50 Angstrom. It supposedly occurs mostly due to the removal of a number of weakly bounded surface proteins. The observed phenomenon can explain the variation of the membrane thickness values obtained by different authors. We suppose that the thickness of 75 Angstrom corresponds to the intact thylakoid membrane.