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Plant Physiology 134:502-509 (2004) © 2004 American Society of Plant Biologists Is Each Light-Harvesting Complex Protein Important for Plant Fitness?1,[w]Umeå Plant Science Centre, Department of Plant Physiology, Umeå University, S-901 87 Umeå, Sweden
Many of the photosynthetic genes are conserved among all higher plants, indicating that there is strong selective pressure to maintain the genes of each protein. However, mutants of these genes often lack visible growth phenotypes, suggesting that they are important only under certain conditions or have overlapping functions. To assess the importance of specific genes encoding the light-harvesting complex (LHC) proteins for the survival of the plant in the natural environment, we have combined two different scientific traditions by using an ecological fitness assay on a set of genetically modified Arabidopsis plants with differing LHC protein contents. The fitness of all of the LHC-deficient plants was reduced in some of the growth environments, supporting the hypothesis that each of the genes has been conserved because they provide ecological flexibility, which is of great adaptive value given the highly variable conditions encountered in nature.
1 This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council, by the Swedish Research Council for the Environment, by Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning, and by the European Community's Human Potential Programme (contract no. HPRN-CT-2002-00248 [PSICO]). [w] The online version of this article contains Web-only data. 2 These authors contributed equally to the paper. Article, publication date, and citation information can be found at www.plantphysiol.org/cgi/doi/10.1104/pp.103.033324. * Corresponding author; e-mail ulrika.ganeteg{at}plantphys.umu.se; fax 46-90-786-66-76. Received September 15, 2003; returned for revision October 16, 2003; accepted October 16, 2003. This article has been cited by other articles:
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