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ENVIRONMENTAL STRESS AND ADAPTATION TO STRESS

Dynamic Acclimation of Photosynthesis Increases Plant Fitness in Changing Environments^{1,[C],[W],[OA]}

Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PT, United Kingdom

Plants growing in different environments develop with different photosynthetic capacities—developmental acclimation of photosynthesis. It is also possible for fully developed leaves to change their photosynthetic capacity—dynamic acclimation. The importance of acclimation has not previously been demonstrated. Here, we show that developmental and dynamic acclimation are distinct processes. Furthermore, we demonstrate that dynamic acclimation plays an important role in increasing the fitness of plants in natural environments. Plants of Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) were grown at low light and then transferred to high light for up to 9 d. This resulted in an increase in photosynthetic capacity of approximately 40%. A microarray analysis showed that transfer to high light resulted in a substantial but transient increase in expression of a gene, At1g61800, encoding a glucose-6-phosphate/phosphate translocator GPT2. Plants where this gene was disrupted were unable to undergo dynamic acclimation. They were, however, still able to acclimate developmentally. When grown under controlled conditions, fitness, measured as seed output and germination, was identical, regardless of GPT2 expression. Under naturally variable conditions, however, fitness was substantially reduced in plants lacking the ability to acclimate. Seed production was halved in gpt2– plants, relative to wild type, and germination of the seed produced substantially less. Dynamic acclimation of photosynthesis is thus shown to play a crucial and previously unrecognized role in determining the fitness of plants growing in changing environments.

² These authors contributed equally to the article.

³ Present address: Laboratory of Quantitative Genomics, Department of Plant Systems Biology and Department of Molecular Genetics, VIB, Technologiepark 927, B–9052 Ghent, Belgium.

The author responsible for distribution of materials integral to the findings presented in this article in accordance with the policy described in the Instructions for Authors (www.plantphysiol.org) is: Giles N. Johnson (giles.johnson{at}manchester.ac.uk).

^[C] Some figures in this article are displayed in color online but in black and white in the print edition.

^[W] The online version of this article contains Web-only data.

^[OA] Open Access articles can be viewed online without a subscription.

www.plantphysiol.org/cgi/doi/10.1104/pp.109.149351

^* Corresponding author; e-mail giles.johnson{at}manchester.ac.uk.

Received October 13, 2009; accepted November 16, 2009; published November 25, 2009.