Occurrence of Far-Red Light Photoacclimation (FaRLiP) in Diverse Cyanobacteria

Life

Fei Gan²  Gaozhong Shen²  Donald A. Bryant²  John C. Meeks¹ 

[1] Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA;;Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA; E-Mails:

关键词: photosynthesis;    photoacclimation;    chlorophyll d;    chlorophyll f;    photosystem;    phycobilisomes;    far-red light;    light harvesting;   

DOI  :  10.3390/life5010004

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Cyanobacteria have evolved a number of acclimation strategies to sense and respond to changing nutrient and light conditions. Leptolyngbya sp. JSC-1 was recently shown to photoacclimate to far-red light by extensively remodeling its photosystem (PS) I, PS II and phycobilisome complexes, thereby gaining the ability to grow in far-red light. A 21-gene photosynthetic gene cluster (rfpA/B/C, apcA2/B2/D2/E2/D3, psbA3/D3/C2/B2/H2/A4, psaA2/B2/L2/I2/F2/J2) that is specifically expressed in far-red light encodes the core subunits of the three major photosynthetic complexes. The growth responses to far-red light were studied here for five additional cyanobacterial strains, each of which has a gene cluster similar to that in Leptolyngbya sp. JSC-1. After acclimation all five strains could grow continuously in far-red light. Under these growth conditions each strain synthesizes chlorophylls d, f and a after photoacclimation, and each strain produces modified forms of PS I, PS II (and phycobiliproteins) that absorb light between 700 and 800 nm. We conclude that these photosynthetic gene clusters are diagnostic of the capacity to photoacclimate to and grow in far-red light. Given the diversity of terrestrial environments from which these cyanobacteria were isolated, it is likely that FaRLiP plays an important role in optimizing photosynthesis in terrestrial environments.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.