Project Details
Projekt Print View

Light stress proteins from the chlorophyll a/b-binding gene family in Arabidopsis thaliana

Subject Area Plant Biochemistry and Biophysics
Term from 2004 to 2012
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 5423272
 
Final Report Year 2011

Final Report Abstract

Plants in Nature frequently perceive environmental extremes, such light stress. To maintain their physiological functions under light stress conditions plants have developed different protection strategies that operate at morphological, anatomical and subcellular levels. The accumulation of light stress proteins from the extended light-harvesting complex (LHC) protein superfamily can be considered to be a part of such photoprotective responses in the chloroplast. Based on the predicted secondary structure, all LHC-like family members are divided into three-helix early lightinduced proteins (ELIPs), two-helix stress-enhanced proteins (SEPs) and one-helix proteins (OHPs), called also high light-induced proteins (HLIPs) in cyanobacteria and cyanophages. Two different ELIPs, six SEPs and two OHPs are encoded by the genome of Arabidopsis thaliana. In this project we investigated expression, subcellular location and physiological functions of these proteins. We demonstrated that ELIPs were not present under low light (LL) conditions and accumulated in response to high light (HL), while significant amounts of SEPs and OHPs were detected in the absence of light stress but their amounts increased during HL exposure. Furthermore, the redox status of the chloroplast regulated transcription and translation of ELIPs and some SEPs, whereby jasmonic acid, ethylene and sugars were directly or indirectly involved in the signal transduction pathway. Localization studies revealed that ELIPs and SEPs are located within the major and minor antenna of photosystem II (PSII), respectively, while OHPs form a heterodimer that accumulates in the antenna of photosystem I (PSI). Analysis of elip and sep knock out and knock down mutants showed that these proteins are not essential for photoprotection under moderate light stress conditions probably due to their functional complementation. At extreme light stress conditions elip and sep mutants showed a difference in photosynthetic performance and pigment dynamics as compared to wild type plants. In contrast, deletion of OHP1 or OHP2 in A. thaliana was lethal indicating an essential function of both proteins. Mutant plants cultivated on an external carbon source showed a photobleached phenotype, had altered chloroplast ultrastructure and were impaired in photosynthetic functions due to loss of PSI and PSII reaction center proteins. The loss of these proteins was caused by problems in their stable membrane insertion. Based on these data we propose that OHPs play a fundamental role in photosynthesis by providing photoprotection to PSI and playing a role in the assembly of photosynthetic complexes, while ELIPs and SEPs are important for photoprotection of PSII under extreme stress conditions.

Publications

 
 

Additional Information

Textvergrößerung und Kontrastanpassung