BackgroundPhotorespiratory carbon metabolism was long considered as an essentially closed and nonregulated pathway with little interaction to other metabolic routes except nitrogen metabolism and respiration. Most mutants of this pathway cannot survive in ambient air and require CO2-enriched air for normal growth. Several studies indicate that this CO2 requirement is very different for individual mutants, suggesting a higher plasticity and more interaction of photorespiratory metabolism as generally thought. To understand this better, we examined a variety of high- and low-level parameters at 1% CO2 and their alteration during acclimation of wild-type plants and selected photorespiratory mutants to ambient air.Methodology and Principal FindingsThe wild type and four photorespiratory mutants of Arabidopsis thaliana (Arabidopsis) were grown to a defined stadium at 1% CO2 and then transferred to normal air (0.038% CO2). All other conditions remained unchanged. This approach allowed unbiased side-by-side monitoring of acclimation processes on several levels. For all lines, diel (24 h) leaf growth, photosynthetic gas exchange, and PSII fluorescence were monitored. Metabolite profiling was performed for the wild type and two mutants. During acclimation, considerable variation between the individual genotypes was detected in many of the examined parameters, which correlated with the position of the impaired reaction in the photorespiratory pathway.ConclusionsPhotorespiratory carbon metabolism does not operate as a fully closed pathway. Acclimation from high to low CO2 was typically steady and consistent for a number of features over several days, but we also found unexpected short-term events, such as an intermittent very massive rise of glycine levels after transition of one particular mutant to ambient air. We conclude that photorespiration is possibly exposed to redox regulation beyond known substrate-level effects. Additionally, our data support the view that 2-phosphoglycolate could be a key regulator of photosynthetic-photorespiratory metabolism as a whole.

Although estuarine microphytobenthos (MPB) is frequently exposed to excessive light and temperature conditions, little is known on their interactive effects on MPB primary productivity. Laboratory and in situ experiments were combined to investigate the short-term joint effects of high light (HL) and high temperature (37 °C versus 27 °C) on the operating efficiency of photoprotective processes [vertical migration versus non-photochemical quenching (NPQ)] exhibited by natural benthic diatom communities from two intertidal flats in France (FR) and Portugal (PT). A clear latitudinal pattern was observed, with PT biofilms being more resistant to HL stress, regardless the effect of temperature, and displaying a lower relative contribution of vertical migration to photoprotection and a stronger NPQ in situ. However, higher temperature leads to comparable effects, with photoinhibition increasing to about three times (i.e. from 3% to 10% and from 8% to 22% in PT and FR sites respectively). By using a number of methodological novelties in MPB research (lipid peroxidation quantification, Lhcx proteins immunodetection), this study brings a physiological basis to the previously reported depression of MPB photosynthetic productivity in summer. They emphasize the joint role of temperature and light in limiting, at least transiently (i.e. during emersion), MPB photosynthetic activity in situ.

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