Metabolomic, photoprotective, and photosynthetic acclimatory responses to post-flowering drought in sorghum.

Climate change is globally affecting rainfall patterns, necessitating the improvement of drought tolerance in crops. is a relatively drought-tolerant cereal. Functional stay-green sorghum genotypes can maintain green leaf area and efficient grain filling during terminal post-flowering water deprivation, a period of ~10 weeks.

High light and temperature reduce photosynthetic efficiency through different mechanisms in the C model Setaria viridis.

C plants frequently experience high light and high temperature conditions in the field, which reduce growth and yield. However, the mechanisms underlying these stress responses in C plants have been under-explored, especially the coordination between mesophyll (M) and bundle sheath (BS) cells. We investigated how the C model plant Setaria viridis responded to a four-hour high light or high temperature treatment at photosynthetic, transcriptomic, and ultrastructural levels.

Role of an ancient light-harvesting protein of PSI in light absorption and photoprotection.

Diverse algae of the red lineage possess chlorophyll a-binding proteins termed LHCR, comprising the PSI light-harvesting system, which represent an ancient antenna form that evolved in red algae and was acquired through secondary endosymbiosis. However, the function and regulation of LHCR complexes remain obscure. Here we describe isolation of a Nannochloropsis oceanica LHCR mutant, named hlr1, which exhibits a greater tolerance to high-light (HL) stress compared to the wild type.

An algal enzyme required for biosynthesis of the most abundant marine carotenoids.

Fucoxanthin and its derivatives are the main light-harvesting pigments in the photosynthetic apparatus of many chromalveolate algae and represent the most abundant carotenoids in the world's oceans, thus being major facilitators of marine primary production. A central step in fucoxanthin biosynthesis that has been elusive so far is the conversion of violaxanthin to neoxanthin. Here, we show that in chromalveolates, this reaction is catalyzed by violaxanthin de-epoxidase-like (VDL) proteins and that VDL is also involved in the formation of other light-harvesting carotenoids such as peridinin or vaucheriaxanthin.

A functional zeaxanthin epoxidase from red algae shedding light on the evolution of light-harvesting carotenoids and the xanthophyll cycle in photosynthetic eukaryotes.

The epoxy-xanthophylls antheraxanthin and violaxanthin are key precursors of light-harvesting carotenoids and participate in the photoprotective xanthophyll cycle. Thus, the invention of zeaxanthin epoxidase (ZEP) catalyzing their formation from zeaxanthin has been a fundamental step in the evolution of photosynthetic eukaryotes. ZEP genes have only been found in Viridiplantae and chromalveolate algae with secondary plastids of red algal ancestry, suggesting that ZEP evolved in the Viridiplantae and spread to chromalveolates by lateral gene transfer.