IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nature/v397y1999i6720d10.1038_17624.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Photosynthetic control of chloroplast gene expression

Author

Listed:
  • Thomas Pfannschmidt

    (Plant Cell Biology, Lund University
    University of Bochum)

  • Anders Nilsson

    (Plant Cell Biology, Lund University)

  • John F. Allen

    (Plant Cell Biology, Lund University)

Abstract

Redox chemistry—the transfer of electrons or hydrogen atoms—is central to energy conversion in respiration and photosynthesis. In photosynthesis in chloroplasts, two separate, light-driven reactions, termed photosystem I and photosystem II, are connected in series by a chain of electron carriers1,2,3. The redox state of one connecting electron carrier, plastoquinone, governs the distribution of absorbed light energy between photosystems I and II by controlling the phosphorylation of a mobile, light-harvesting, pigment–protein complex4,5. Here we show that the redox state of plastoquinone also controls the rate of transcription of genes encoding reaction-centre apoproteins of photosystem I and photosystem II. As a result of this control, the stoichiometry between the two photosystems changes in a way that counteracts the inefficiency produced when either photosystem limits the rate of the other. In eukaryotes, these reaction-centre proteins are encoded universally within the chloroplast. Photosynthetic control of chloroplast gene expression indicates an evolutionary explanation for this rule: the redox signal-transduction pathway can be short, the response rapid, and the control direct.

Suggested Citation

  • Thomas Pfannschmidt & Anders Nilsson & John F. Allen, 1999. "Photosynthetic control of chloroplast gene expression," Nature, Nature, vol. 397(6720), pages 625-628, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:397:y:1999:i:6720:d:10.1038_17624
    DOI: 10.1038/17624
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/17624
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/17624?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Pablo Ignacio Calzadilla & Junliang Song & Patrick Gallois & Giles Nicholas Johnson, 2024. "Proximity to Photosystem II is necessary for activation of Plastid Terminal Oxidase (PTOX) for photoprotection," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-13, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:397:y:1999:i:6720:d:10.1038_17624. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.