UNPI · Improving the productivity of Northern hemisphere agroforestry through understanding the nature of photosystem I in cold stressed plants

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Project objective

Photosystem I (PSI) of the plant thylakoid plays a vital role in the transduction of light energy for the fixation of carbon by plants. Recently it has been suggested that photodamage of PSI by illumination at low, non-freezing temperatures has a greater impact on agricultural and forest productivity in Europe than previously realised because damaged PSI can take from several days to a week to recover. There are likely multiple mechanisms that plants employ to minimise PSI damage, the majority of these being responses to high excitation pressure rather than low temperature per se.Our hypothesis is that the composition of the bulk thylakoid lipid matrix, rather than a response to high excitation pressure, may be the difference between cold sensitive and cold tolerant plants and maybe constitutes the major mechanism in low temperature-specific acclimation. We propose to validate this hypothesis through a unique multidisciplinary experimental approach that combines the new field of proteomics with state-of-the-art molecular biology, biochemical analysis of thylakoid lipids and biophysical techniques to investigate cold acclimation in species contrasting in their cold sensitivity.The proposed work, to be undertaken at Prof. Norm Huner's research group at the University of Western Ontario, will provide the expert training in proteomics and PSI biophysical measurements required to advance Dr Hendrickson's skills and experience in the fields of ecophysiology, cold acclimation and comparative proteomics. Field experimentation shall be used to validate our controlled environment experiments at the world-class BIOTRON facility using both economically important crop species and several lipid-reduced mutants of Arabidopsis thaliana.A detailed knowledge of the molecular mechanisms responsible for PSI photo-protection operating in cold tolerant plants may permit the transfer of these traits to cold-sensitive species to increase their endurance, crop yield and distribution.

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

• UMEÃ¥ UNIVERSITY · UMEÃ¥CoordinatorCountry levelSweden
• THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO · LONDON, ONTARIOCanada

Links

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