Abstract
Diurnal and seasonal changes of abiotic environmental factors shape plant performance and distribution. Changes of growth temperature and light intensity may vary significantly on a diurnal, but also on a weekly or seasonal scale. Hence, acclimation to a changing temperature and light regime is essential for plant survival and propagation. In the present study, we analyzed photosynthetic CO2 assimilation and metabolic regulation of the central carbohydrate metabolism in two natural accessions of Arabidopsis thaliana that originate from north western Russia and south Italy during exposure to heat and a combination of heat and high light. Our findings indicate that it is hardly possible to predict photosynthetic capacities under combined stress from single stress experiments. Further, capacities of hexose phosphorylation were found to be significantly lower in the Italian than in the Russian accession, which could explain an inverted sucrose-to-hexose ratio. Together with the finding of significantly stronger accumulation of anthocyanins under heat/high light, these observations indicate a central role of hexokinase activity in the stabilization of photosynthesis and carbohydrate metabolism during environmental changes.
Highlights
Changes of growth temperature and light intensity broadly affect plant molecular, physiological, and developmental processes
Photosynthesis and carbohydrate metabolism are immediately affected by changes in temperature and/or light intensity
Not significant, net photosynthesis (NPS) rates in Rsch-4 were ~1.5-fold higher after 3 d high light (HHL) and this effect was most pronounced under high photosynthetically active radiation (PAR), i.e., >600 μmol photons
Summary
Changes of growth temperature and light intensity broadly affect plant molecular, physiological, and developmental processes. The availability of numerous natural accessions from a wide range of geographical origin enables the comparison of acclimation strategies and stress-responses on a genetic, biochemical, physiological and ecological level [1,2,3,4]. Such comparative approaches potentially provide detailed molecular insight into the complex regulation of plant metabolism, which promotes our understanding of how global climatic changes affect plant communities and ecosystems and might indicate breeding strategies to increase stress tolerance of crop plants. It is necessary to study plant acclimation and response to an abiotic stress combination because it remains hardly possible to reliably predict specific plant responses from single stress experiments [5,6]
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