Effects of long-term ionic and osmotic stress conditions on photosynthesis in the cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803
Saowarath Jantaro A B , Paula Mulo A , Tove Jansén A , Aran Incharoensakdi B and Pirkko Mäenpää A CA Department of Biology, University of Turku, FIN-20014 Turku, Finland.
B Program of Biotechnology and Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Science, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok 10330, Thailand.
C Corresponding author. Email: pirmae@utu.fi
Functional Plant Biology 32(9) 807-815 https://doi.org/10.1071/FP04219
Submitted: 20 November 2004 Accepted: 3 May 2005 Published: 26 August 2005
Abstract
Salinity is considered to be one of the most severe problems in worldwide agricultural production, but the published investigations give contradictory results of the effect of ionic and osmotic stresses on photosynthesis. In the present study, long-term effects of both ionic and osmotic stresses, especially on photosynthesis, were investigated using the moderately halotolerant cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803. Our results show that the PSII activity and the photosynthetic capacity tolerated NaCl but a high concentration of sorbitol completely inhibited both activities. In line with these results, we show that the amount of the D1 protein of PSII was decreased under severe osmotic stress, whereas the levels of PsaA / B and NdhF3 proteins remained unchanged. However, high concentrations of sorbitol stress led to a drastic decrease of both psbA (encoding D1) and psaA (encoding PsaA) transcripts, suggesting that severe osmotic stress may abolish the tight coordination of transcription and translation normally present in bacteria, at least in the case of the psaA gene. Taken together, our results indicate that the osmotic stress component is more detrimental to photosynthesis than the ionic one and, furthermore, under osmotic stress, the D1 protein appears to be the target of this stress treatment.
Keywords: ionic stress, osmotic stress, photosynthesis, Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803.
Acknowledgments
The NdhF3 antibody was kindly provided by Prof Eva-Mari Aro, and the PSI complex antibody by Dr Torill Hundal. This work was supported by the Thailand Research Fund through the Royal Golden Jubilee PhD program (PHD / 0171 / 2542) to S Jantaro and A Incharoensakdi and by the Academy of Finland to P Mäenpää.
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