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Updated: May 13, 2026

Light-Controlled Fermentations for Microbial Chemical and Protein Production
Published on: March 22, 2022
Post-transcriptional control of light-harvesting genes expression under light stress
Maïna Floris1, Roberto Bassi, Christophe Robaglia
1Laboratoire de Génétique et Biophysique des Plantes, Service de Biologie Végétale et de Microbiologie Environnementale, Unite Mixte de Recherche 7225, Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Faculte des Sciences de Luminy, Aix Marseille Universite, 13009, Marseille, France.
Abstract:
Plants have to deal with fluctuating light environment and the regulation of the photosynthetic apparatus is crucial for their survival. The large multigenic family of nuclear encoded chloroplastic proteins called light harvesting complex (LHC) is involved in both light harvesting and photoprotection. Changes in light intensity induce a complex set of molecular events within both the chloroplast and the cytoplasmic compartments of the cell leading to reorganization of the photosynthetic apparatus in order to optimize photosynthesis to the new conditions. In this study we have investigated the occurrence of translational regulations during light stress in Arabidopsis thaliana by using polysomes profiling. We have observed a strong effect of light on global translation activity of the cell. We show that individual LHC genes are translationally regulated in response to light conditions by changing the ratio between polysomal versus total messenger RNA. In addition, we found that cytoplasmic translational regulation can precede nuclear transcriptional regulation. Thus translational control appears as an important component of the crosstalk between chloroplast and the nucleus in plant cells.
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