Regulation of photosynthetic carbon assimilation in leaves of C3–C4 intermediate species of Moricandia and Flaveria

Abstract

The relationship between the gas-exchange characteristics, the contents of photosynthetic intermediates and the quantum yield of photosystem II was examined at different intercellular partial pressures of CO2 (pi) in attached leaves of Moricandia arvensis L. (D.C.) and Flaveria floridana J.R. Johnson (both C3–C4 intermediate plants) and, for comparison, in F. pringlei Gandoger (a C3 plant) and in F. bidentis (a C4 plant). Both C3–C4 intermediate species had pools of phosphoenolpyruvate, pyruvate, alanine and aspartate intermediate to those of the C3 and C4 species examined. Moricandia arvensis had large pools of glycine at low pi, consistent with the operation of a glycine shuttle from mesophyll to bundle-sheath cells. It also had a high pool of triose-phosphate at ambient partial pressures of CO2, indicating that a glycerate-3-phosphate/triose-phosphate shuttle could operate in this species. This was not the case in F. floridana. A decline in the ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate and triose-phosphate pool in M. arvensis, and a rise in the pools of glycerate-3-phosphate and pyruvate in F. floridana, at low pi, show different patterns of metabolic regulation in M. arvensis and F. floridana at low pi in comparison to C3 and C4 plants.