The developmental transition from vegetative growth to flowering in Arabidopsis is associated with a precipitous decline in the activity of leaf ascorbate peroxidase (APx), an enzymatic scavenger of hydrogen peroxide, and an increase in specific lipid peroxidation leading to the accumulation of 13-hydroperoxy-9,11,15 (Z,E,Z) octadecatrienoic acid (13 HOO-FA). The appearance of this specific isomer suggests that it is of enzymatic origin and may represent the activation of an oxylipin signaling pathway. We thus hypothesized that leaf 13-lipoxygenase (LOX) activity increases at the floral transition and leads to the observed elevation of 13-HOO-FA levels. Leaf protein extracts were prepared from seven distinct life stages of Arabidopsis plants and used to assay for LOX activity. We report that leaf 13-LOX enzymatic activity increases twoto three-fold from the vegetative stage to the immediate post-floral transition stage. We found two forms of LOX activity in cell extracts and show that the higher pH optimum form is the isoenzyme activated. This increase is correlated with a small increase in H 2 O 2 , perhaps resulting from the previously reported decline in leaf APx activity. Very low levels of exogenous H 2 O 2 activate the induced form in vegetative leaf extracts in vitro, suggesting that the floral transition-dependent APx decline and subsequent H 2 O 2 elevation are involved in activating plastid 13-LOX and thus a second messenger oxylipin pathway.
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