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The arc mutants of Arabidopsis with fewer large chloroplasts have a lower mesophyll conductance

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Abstract

Photosynthetic cells of most land plant lineages have numerous small chloroplasts even though most algae, and even the early diverging land plant group the hornworts, tend to have one or a few large chloroplasts. One constraint that small chloroplasts could improve is the resistance to CO2 diffusion from the atmosphere to the chloroplast stroma. We examined the mesophyll conductance (inverse of the diffusion resistance) of mutant Arabidopsis thaliana plants with one or only a few large chloroplasts per cell. The accumulation and replication of chloroplasts (arc) mutants of A. thaliana were studied by model fitting to gas exchange data and 13CO2 discrimination during carbon fixation. The two methods generally agreed, but the value of the CO2 compensation point of Rubisco (Γ *) used in the model had a large impact on the estimated photosynthetic parameters, including mesophyll conductance. We found that having only a few large chloroplasts per cell resulted in a 25–50 % reduction in the mesophyll conductance at ambient CO2.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. Katherine Osteryoung for providing the arc mutant seeds and for thoughtful discussions throughout the project. This work was supported by DOE grant DE-SC0008509 to TDS and NSF grant IOS-0719118 and NIH grant NIH-NCRR P20RR18754 to DTH. Partial salary support for TDS comes from Michigan State University AgBioResearch.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, Michigan State University, 603 Wilson Road, Room 201, East Lansing, MI, 48824, USA

    Sean E. Weise, David J. Carr, Ashley M. Bourke, Debbie Swarthout & Thomas D. Sharkey

  2. Department of Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA

    David T. Hanson

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  1. Sean E. Weise
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  2. David J. Carr
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  3. Ashley M. Bourke
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  4. David T. Hanson
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  6. Thomas D. Sharkey
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Correspondence to Thomas D. Sharkey.

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Weise, S.E., Carr, D.J., Bourke, A.M. et al. The arc mutants of Arabidopsis with fewer large chloroplasts have a lower mesophyll conductance. Photosynth Res 124, 117–126 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11120-015-0110-4

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