PGR5-PGRL1-Dependent Cyclic Electron Transport Modulates Linear Electron Transport Rate in Arabidopsis thaliana

Plants need tight regulation of photosynthetic electron transport for survival and growth under environ- mental and metabolic conditions. For this purpose, the linear electron transport （LET） pathway is supple- mented by a number of alternative electron transfer pathways and valves. In Arabidopsis, cyclic electron transport （CET） around photosystem I （PSI）, which recycles electrons from ferrodoxin to plastoquinone, is the most investigated alternative route. However, the interdependence of LET and CET and the relative importance of CET remain unclear, largely due to the difficulties in precise assessment of the contribution of CET in the presence of LET, which dominates electron flow under physiological conditions. We there- fore generated Arabidopsis mutants with a minimal water-splitting activity, and thus a low rate of LET, by combining knockout mutations in Psb01, PsbP2, PsbQ1, PsbQ2, and PsbR loci. The resulting 45 mutant is viable, although mature leaves contain only ~20% of wild-type naturally less abundant Psb02 protein. 45 plants compensate for the reduction in LET by increasing the rate of CET, and inducing a strong non-photochemical quenching （NPQ） response during dark-to-light transitions. To identify the molecular origin of such a high-capacity CET, we constructed three sextuple mutants lacking the qE component of NPQ （45 npq4-1）, NDH-mediated CET （45 crr4-3）, or PGR5-PGRLl-mediated CET （45 pgrS）. Their analysis revealed that PGR5-PGRLl-mediated CET plays a major role in ~pH formation and induction of NPQ in C3 plants. Moreover, while pgr5 dies at the seedling stage under fluctuating light conditions, 45 pgr5 plants are able to survive, which underlines the importance of PGR5 in modulating the intersystem electron transfer.

How the optical timing system,the longitudinal diagnostics and the associated feedback systems provide femtosecond stable operation at the FERMI free electron laser

FERMI, the seeded free electron laser(FEL) in operation in Italy, is providing the User Community with unique fully coherent radiation, in the wavelength range 100–4 nm. FERMI is the first FEL fully synchronized by means of optical fibers. The optical timing system ensures an ultra-stable phase reference to its distributed clients. Several femtosecond longitudinal diagnostics verify the achieved performance; the bunch length monitor(BLM) and the bunch arrival monitor(BAM) will be presented in this paper. Feedback systems play a crucial role to guarantee the needed longterm electron beam stability. A real-time infrastructure allows shot-to-shot communication between front-end computers and the servers. Orbit feedbacks are useful in machine tuning, whereas longitudinal feedbacks control electron energy,compression and arrival time. A flexible software framework allows a rapid implementation of heterogeneous multiinput–multi-output(MIMO) longitudinal loops simply by selecting the appropriate sensors and actuators.