Mutants, Overexpressors, and Interactors of Arabidopsis Plastocyanin Isoforms： Revised Roles of Plastocyanin in Photosynthetic Electron Flow and Thylakoid Redox State

Two homologous plastocyanin isoforms are encoded by the genes PETE1 and PETE2 in the nuclear genome of Arabidopsis thaliana. The PETE2 transcript is expressed at considerably higher levels and the PETE2 protein is the more abundant isoform. Null mutations in the PETE genes resulted in plants, designated pete1 and pete2, with decreased plastocyanin contents. However, despite reducing plastocyanin levels by over -90%, a pete2 null mutation on its own affects rates of photosynthesis and growth only slightly, whereas pete1 knockout plants, with about 60-80% of the wild-type plastocyanin level, did not show any alteration. Hence, plastocyanin concentration is not limiting for photosynthetic elec- tron flow under optimal growth conditions, perhaps implying other possible physiological roles for the protein. Indeed, plastocyanin has been proposed previously to cooperate with cytochrome C6A （Cyt C6A） in thylakoid redox reactions, but we find no evidence for a physical interaction between the two proteins, using interaction assays in yeast. We observed homodimerization of Cyt C6A in yeast interaction assays, but also Cyt C6A homodimers failed to interact with plastocyanin. Moreover, phenotypic analysis of atc6-1 pete1 and atc6-1 pete2 double mutants, each lacking Cyt C6A and one of the two piastocyanin-encoding genes, failed to reveal any genetic interaction. Overexpression of either PETE1 or PETE2 in the pete1 pete2 double knockout mutant background results in essentially wild-type photosynthetic performance, excluding the possibility that the two plastocyanin isoforms could have distinct functions in thylakoid electron flow.

Integration of Carbon Assimilation Modes with Photosynthetic Light Capture in the Green Alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii

The unicellular green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii is capable of using organic and inorganic carbon sources simultaneously, which requires the adjustment of photosynthetic activity to the prevailing mode of carbon assimilation. We obtained novel insights into the regulation of light-harvesting at photosystem II （PSII） following altered carbon source avail- ability. In C. reinhardtii, synthesis of PSll-associated light-harvesting proteins （LHCBMs） is controlled by the cytosolic RNA- binding protein NAB1, which represses translation of particular LHCBM isoform transcripts. This mechanism is fine-tuned via regulation of the nuclear NAB1 promoter, which is activated when linear photosynthetic electron flow is restricted by CO2- limitation in a photoheterotrophic context. In the wild-type, accumulation of NAB1 reduces the functional PSII antenna size, thus preventing a harmful overexcited state of PSII, as observed in a NABl-less mutant. We further demonstrate that trans- lation control as a newly identified long-term response to prolonged CO2-1imitation replaces LHCII state transitions as a fast response to PSII over-excitation. Intriguingly, activation of the long-term response is perturbed in state transition mutant stt7, suggesting a regulatory link between the long- and short-term response. We depict a regulatory circuit operating on distinct timescales and in different cellular compartments to fine-tune light-harvesting in photoheterotrophic eukaryotes.