TY - JOUR
T1 - Photosynthesis without β-carotene
AU - Xu, Pengqi
AU - Chukhutsina, Volha U.
AU - Nawrocki, Wojciech J.
AU - Schansker, Gert
AU - Bielczynski, Ludwik W.
AU - Lu, Yinghong
AU - Karcher, Daniel
AU - Bock, Ralph
AU - Croce, Roberta
PY - 2020/9/25
Y1 - 2020/9/25
N2 - Carotenoids are essential in oxygenic photosynthesis: they stabilize the pigment-protein complexes, are active in harvesting sunlight and in photoprotection. In plants, they are present as carotenes and their oxygenated derivatives, xanthophylls. While mutant plants lacking xanthophylls are capable of photoautotrophic growth, no plants without carotenes in their photosystems have been reported so far, which has led to the common opinion that carotenes are essential for photosynthesis. Here, we report the first plant that grows photoautotrophically in the absence of carotenes: a tobacco plant containing only the xanthophyll astaxanthin. Surprisingly, both photosystems are fully functional despite their carotenoid-binding sites being occupied by astaxanthin instead of β-carotene or remaining empty (i.e., are not occupied by carotenoids). These plants display non-photochemical quenching, despite the absence of both zeaxanthin and lutein and show that tobacco can regulate the ratio between the two photosystems in a very large dynamic range to optimize electron transport.
AB - Carotenoids are essential in oxygenic photosynthesis: they stabilize the pigment-protein complexes, are active in harvesting sunlight and in photoprotection. In plants, they are present as carotenes and their oxygenated derivatives, xanthophylls. While mutant plants lacking xanthophylls are capable of photoautotrophic growth, no plants without carotenes in their photosystems have been reported so far, which has led to the common opinion that carotenes are essential for photosynthesis. Here, we report the first plant that grows photoautotrophically in the absence of carotenes: a tobacco plant containing only the xanthophyll astaxanthin. Surprisingly, both photosystems are fully functional despite their carotenoid-binding sites being occupied by astaxanthin instead of β-carotene or remaining empty (i.e., are not occupied by carotenoids). These plants display non-photochemical quenching, despite the absence of both zeaxanthin and lutein and show that tobacco can regulate the ratio between the two photosystems in a very large dynamic range to optimize electron transport.
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U2 - 10.7554/ELIFE.58984
DO - 10.7554/ELIFE.58984
M3 - Article
C2 - 32975516
AN - SCOPUS:85092132676
SN - 2050-084X
VL - 9
SP - 1
EP - 16
JO - eLife
JF - eLife
M1 - e58984
ER -