Skip to main content
NCBI home page
The Plant Cell logoLink to The Plant Cell
. 1989 Jun;1(6):645–654. doi: 10.1105/tpc.1.6.645

Post-transcriptional control of plastid mRNA accumulation during adaptation of chloroplasts to different light quality environments.

X W Deng 1, J C Tonkyn 1, G F Peter 1, J P Thornber 1, W Gruissem 1
PMCID: PMC159799  PMID: 2535516

Abstract

The adaptation of germinating spinach seedlings to yellow and red light was studied and compared with plants grown in white light. Spinach chloroplasts isolated from cotyledons and leaves of yellow and white light-grown plants showed similar membrane structures and compositions, while chloroplasts from plants grown in red light have significant adaptive changes. Based on an equal amount of chlorophyll, these changes include a reduction in the number of photosystem I complexes, an increase of photosystem II antenna size, and an increased ratio of stacked to unstacked membranes in red light-adapted chloroplasts. The decrease in the number of photosystem I complexes per unit of chlorophyll in these chloroplasts was qualitatively correlated with an approximately 10-fold decrease in the level of the psaA mRNA encoding the photosystem I 65-kilodalton to 70-kilodalton chlorophyll apoprotein, as well as with a differential decrease in mRNA levels of other photosynthetic proteins. Light quality adaptations do not significantly affect the plastid to nuclear DNA ratio or the overall chloroplast transcription activity. The relative transcriptional activities of 10 plastid genes, as determined by run-on transcription assays, are similar in chloroplasts from cotyledons and leaves of plants grown under the three light qualities. Only the psaA gene shows a 30% to 40% decrease in transcription activity in chloroplasts of plants adapted to red light. This decrease in psaA transcription activity, however, cannot fully account for the decrease of its mRNA level. We conclude, therefore, that post-transcriptional mechanisms are primarily responsible for the control of differential chloroplast mRNA accumulation in light quality adaptations.

Full Text

The Full Text of this article is available as a PDF (3.7 MB).

Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

  1. Anderson J. M., Melis A. Localization of different photosystems in separate regions of chloroplast membranes. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1983 Feb;80(3):745–749. doi: 10.1073/pnas.80.3.745. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  2. Andersson B., Anderson J. M. Lateral heterogeneity in the distribution of chlorophyll-protein complexes of the thylakoid membranes of spinach chloroplasts. Biochim Biophys Acta. 1980 Dec 3;593(2):427–440. doi: 10.1016/0005-2728(80)90078-x. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  3. Deng X. W., Gruissem W. Constitutive transcription and regulation of gene expression in non-photosynthetic plastids of higher plants. EMBO J. 1988 Nov;7(11):3301–3308. doi: 10.1002/j.1460-2075.1988.tb03200.x. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  4. Deng X. W., Gruissem W. Control of plastid gene expression during development: the limited role of transcriptional regulation. Cell. 1987 May 8;49(3):379–387. doi: 10.1016/0092-8674(87)90290-x. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  5. Glick R. E., McCauley S. W., Gruissem W., Melis A. Light quality regulates expression of chloroplast genes and assembly of photosynthetic membrane complexes. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1986 Jun;83(12):4287–4291. doi: 10.1073/pnas.83.12.4287. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  6. Gruissem W., Barkan A., Deng X. W., Stern D. Transcriptional and post-transcriptional control of plastid mRNA levels in higher plants. Trends Genet. 1988 Sep;4(9):258–263. doi: 10.1016/0168-9525(88)90033-9. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  7. Gruissem W. Chloroplast gene expression: how plants turn their plastids on. Cell. 1989 Jan 27;56(2):161–170. doi: 10.1016/0092-8674(89)90889-1. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  8. Laemmli U. K. Cleavage of structural proteins during the assembly of the head of bacteriophage T4. Nature. 1970 Aug 15;227(5259):680–685. doi: 10.1038/227680a0. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  9. Melis A. Light regulation of photosynthetic membrane structure, organization, and function. J Cell Biochem. 1984;24(3):271–285. doi: 10.1002/jcb.240240308. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  10. Mullet J. E., Klein R. R. Transcription and RNA stability are important determinants of higher plant chloroplast RNA levels. EMBO J. 1987 Jun;6(6):1571–1579. doi: 10.1002/j.1460-2075.1987.tb02402.x. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

Articles from The Plant Cell are provided here courtesy of Oxford University Press

RESOURCES