The chloroplast photo-oxidation and the expression of the Cab gene Lhcb1, encoding the Lhcb1 light-harvesting chlorophyll a/b-protein of PS II, have been studied in leaf cells of maize treated with the two bleaching herbicides norflurazon and amitrole and of the two carotenoid-free mutants vp9 and vp2 grown under high photodamaging light. Both herbicides and mutations caused severe photo-oxidation of organelles. However, the plastids of norflurazon-treated and vp2 leaves were totally devoid of thylakoids and did not contain any chlorophyll, while the organelles of amitrole-treated and vp9 leaves still had a few altered and photosynthetically unfunctional membranes and very small quantities of chlorophylls. Despite the dramatic photodamage undergone by the plastids over several days, the cells of amitrole-treated and vp9 leaves maintained a certain expression of the Lhcb1 gene which, on the contrary, was completely blocked in the cells of norflurazon-treated and vp2 leaves. The experimental results, obtained by integrating biochemical and molecular analyses with ultrastructural observations, show that the maintainance of Cab gene expression does not strictly depend on intact and functional chloroplasts. The transcription of these genes, still maintained in cells with greatly photo-oxidized organelles, seems to be inversely related to the degree of thylakoid demolition, which can affect the last steps of chlorophyll biosynthesis.