Nitrogen Starvation Impacts the Photosynthetic Performance of Porphyridium cruentum as Revealed by Chlorophyll a Fluorescence.

Sci Rep

State Key Laboratory of Microbial Technology, Marine Biotechnology Research Center, Institute of Marine Science and Technology, Shandong University, Jinan, 250100, China.

Published: August 2017

AI Article Synopsis

  • Nitrogen is crucial for plant and algae survival, directly affecting the photosynthetic efficiency of algae like red algae, which possess unique structures called phycobilisomes.
  • A study analyzed the effects of nitrogen starvation on the photosynthetic performance of Porphyridium cruentum using advanced chlorophyll fluorescence techniques.
  • Results indicated that nitrogen deficiency led to decreased efficiency and activity of photosystem II (PSII), impaired light energy conversion, and reduced thermal energy dissipation, ultimately compromising the algae's ability to handle high light conditions.

Article Abstract

Nitrogen is one of the most important nutrients needed for plants and algae to survive, and the photosynthetic ability of algae is related to nitrogen abundance. Red algae are unique photosynthetic eukaryotic organisms in the evolution of algae, as they contain phycobilisomes (PBSs) on their thylakoid membranes. In this report, the in vivo chlorophyll (Chl) a fluorescence kinetics of nitrogen-starved Porphyridium cruentum were analyzed to determine the effects of nitrogen deficiency on photosynthetic performance using a multi-color pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) chlorophyll fluorometer. Due to nitrogen starvation, the photochemical efficiency of PSII and the activity of PSII reaction centers (RCs) decreased, and photoinhibition of PSII occurred. The water-splitting system on the donor side of PSII was seriously impacted by nitrogen deficiency, leading to the inactivation of the oxygen-evolving complex (OEC) and decreased light energy conversion efficiency. In nitrogen-starved cells, a higher proportion of energy was used for photochemical reactions, and thermal dissipation was reduced, as shown by qP and qN. The ability of nitrogen-starved cells to tolerate and resist high photon flux densities was weakened. Our results showed that the photosynthetic performance of P. cruentum was severely impacted by nitrogen deficiency.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5561210PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-08428-6DOI Listing

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