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Photosynthesis

Making light of a dark situation

Nature volume 397, pages 27–28 (1999)Cite this article

When the seedlings of flowering plants are grown in the dark (etiolated seedlings), they cannot make chlorophyll because the enzyme that reduces protochlorophyllide to chlorophyllide — protochlorophyllide oxidoreductase (POR) — requires light. As well as collecting light for photosynthesis, chlorophylls protect the plant by dissipating excess light energy. So, when etiolated seedlings emerge from the soil into the sunlight they lack these photoprotective mechanisms. Moreover, if a seedling emerges into low light it may not be able to synthesize chlorophyll rapidly enough to take full advantage of this photosynthetic opportunity. On page 80 of this issue, Reinbothe et al.1 show that POR, which presents the plant with these dilemmas, also provides it with the solution.

Reinbothe and colleagues reconstituted LHPP in vitro and found that it had different spectral properties from the complex in vivo. However, by adding galactolipids and sulpholipids from etioplasts to the mixture, they were able to obtain LHPP with spectral characteristics similar to those of etioplast membrane preparations. They found that protochlorophyllide b in the LHPP initially has a light-harvesting function. It then transfers light energy to protochlorophyllide a for photoreduction to chlorophyllide a by PORB. By this transfer, protochlorophyllide a is rapidly photoreduced — even under low light intensities — so that the seedling can assemble its photosynthetic apparatus quickly.

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Figure 1: Conversion of an etioplast to a chloroplast.

References

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  1. School of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University, Macquarie Drive, North Ryde , 2109, Sydney, Australia

    Robert Willows

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  1. Robert Willows
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Willows, R. Making light of a dark situation. Nature 397, 27–28 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/16161

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