First published online July 22, 2005; 10.1104/pp.105.063768
Plant Physiology 138:2292-2298 (2005)
© 2005 American Society of Plant Biologists
BIOENERGETICS AND PHOTOSYNTHESIS
Fractionation of the Three Stable Oxygen Isotopes by Oxygen-Producing and Oxygen-Consuming Reactions in Photosynthetic Organisms1,[w]
Yael Helman2,
Eugeni Barkan,
Doron Eisenstadt2,
Boaz Luz and
Aaron Kaplan*
Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences and Minerva Avron-Evenari Center of Photosynthesis Research Center (Y.H., D.E., A.K.), and Institute of Earth Sciences (E.B., B.L.), Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 91904, Israel
The triple isotope composition ( 17O and 18O) of dissolved O2 in the ocean and in ice cores was recently used to assess the primary productivity over broad spatial and temporal scales. However, assessment of the productivity with the aid of this method must rely on accurate measurements of the 17O/16O versus 18O/16O relationship in each of the main oxygen-producing and -consuming reactions. Data obtained here showed that cleavage of water in photosystem II did not fractionate oxygen isotopes; the 18O and 17O of the O2 evolved were essentially identical to those of the substrate water. The fractionation slopes for the oxygenase reaction of Rubisco and respiration were identical (0.518 ± 0.001) and that of glycolate oxidation was 0.503 ± 0.002. There was a considerable difference in the slopes of O2 photoreduction (the Mehler reaction) in the cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. strain PCC 6803 (0.497 ± 0.004) and that of pea (Pisum sativum) thylakoids (0.526 ± 0.001). These values provided clear and independent evidence that the mechanism of O2 photoreduction differs between higher plants and cyanobacteria. We used our method to assess the magnitude of O2 photoreduction in cyanobacterial cells maintained under conditions where photorespiration was negligible. It was found that electron flow to O2 can be as high as 40% that leaving photosystem II, whereas respiratory activity in the light is only 6%. The implications of our findings to the evaluation of specific O2-producing or -consuming reactions, in vivo, are discussed.
1 This work was supported by grants from the Israel Science Foundation, the U.S.-Israel Binational Science Foundation, The Ring Foundation, and the German Ministerium for Bildung, Wissenshaft, Forschung, und Technologie.
2 These authors contributed equally to the paper.
[w] The online version of this article contains Web-only data.
Article, publication date, and citation information can be found at www.plantphysiol.org/cgi/doi/10.1104/pp.105.063768.
* Corresponding author; e-mail aaronka{at}vms.huji.ac.il; fax 97226584463.
Received April 3, 2005;
returned for revision May 1, 2005;
accepted May 2, 2005.
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