Environmental News Network - Learning From the Past: How Algae Use Memory to Protect Against Sudden Changes in Sunlight

Details: By Berkeley Lab; 11.Dec

Fluctuating sunlight poses a challenge for plants and green algae, which must quickly adjust their photosynthetic systems to remain efficient in changing conditions.

Cheryl Porter

Fluctuating sunlight poses a challenge for plants and green algae, which must quickly adjust their photosynthetic systems to remain efficient in changing conditions. Aiding in that response is a kind of rudimentary memory that allows these organisms to respond more rapidly to changes in light following previous fluctuations. The details of how this photoprotective memory works are now coming to light through a study led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) scientists published recently in Nature Communications. The results may help scientists develop more productive plants and improve crop yields.

“Clouds passing in front of the sun can cause huge jumps in light intensity for a plant, going very quickly from way too much light to not enough,” said Graham Fleming, a senior faculty scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Biosciences Area and professor of chemistry at UC Berkeley, who co-led the study with Krishna Niyogi, a faculty scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Biosciences Area and professor of plant and microbial biology at UC Berkeley. “Plant efficiency, and therefore their survival, is related to how they respond to these massive fluctuations. If we understand how to improve the match between a plant’s photoprotective response and the light fluctuations, then we can improve its productivity.”

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Learning From the Past: How Algae Use Memory to Protect Against Sudden Changes in Sunlight