Regulation of electron transport in photosynthesis

Abstract

Photosynthetic organisms display a remarkable flexibility in their capacity to adjust photosynthetic performances in response to changes in their environment. This flexibility arises from the interplay of a range of different responses, including fast changes in light harvesting, changes in the pathways of electron flow and slower changes in the protein composition of the photosynthetic machinery. An array of possible adaptative responses is available to most photosynthetic organisms, which have in general selected from amongst these during their evolution to cope with the environmental circumstances of their specific environment. In this chapter we describe some representative strategies employed by eukaryotic photosynthetic organisms to adapt electron transfer capacity. We discuss processes in well characterised organisms from the green lineage ( Arabidopsis thaliana and Chlamydomonas reinhardtii), and then focus on some peculiar strategies that have emerged in other organisms, in particular in marine phytoplankton.