Abstract
Permanently cold habitats dominate our planet and psychrophilic microorganisms thrive in cold environments. Environmental adaptations unique to psychrophilic microorganisms have been thoroughly described; however, the vast majority of studies to date have focused on cold-adapted bacteria. The combination of low temperatures in the presence of light is one of the most damaging environmental stresses for a photosynthetic organism: in order to survive, photopsychrophiles (i.e. photosynthetic organisms adapted to low temperatures) balance temperature-independent reactions of light energy capture/transduction with downstream temperature-dependent metabolic processes such as carbon fixation. Here, we review research on photopsychrophiles with a focus on an emerging model organism, Chlamydomonas raudensis UWO241 (UWO241). UWO241 is a psychrophilic green algal species and is a member of the photosynthetic microbial eukaryote community that provides the majority of fixed carbon for ice-covered lake ecosystems located in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica. The water column exerts a range of environmental stressors on the phytoplankton community that inhabits this aquatic ecosystem, including low temperatures, extreme shade of an unusual spectral range (blue-green), high salinity, nutrient deprivation and extremes in seasonal photoperiod. More than two decades of work on UWO241 have produced one of our most comprehensive views of environmental adaptation in a cold-adapted, photosynthetic microbial eukaryote.
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Abbreviations
- cDNA:
-
Complementary DNA
- Chl:
-
Chlorophyll
- Ea:
-
Activation energy
- ELB:
-
East lobe Bonney
- HSP:
-
Heat shock proteins
- IBP:
-
Ice-binding proteins
- k cat :
-
Catalytic constant
- KEGG:
-
Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes
- LHC:
-
Light-harvesting complex
- MGDG:
-
Monogalactosyldiacylglycerol
- PQ:
-
Plastoquinone
- PSI:
-
Photosystem I
- PSII:
-
Photosystem II
- NR:
-
Nitrate reductase
- Q A :
-
Quinone A
- Q Ared,ox :
-
Reduced or oxidized quinone A
- qE:
-
Energy-dependent quenching
- qPCR:
-
Quantitative PCR
- RubisCO:
-
Ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase
- T max :
-
Maximum growth temperature
- WLB:
-
West lobe Bonney
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Acknowledgments
The authors thank John C. Priscu and Patrick J. Neale for original isolation and donation of Chlamydomonas raudensis UWO241 strain. RMK and JMD were supported by the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program and Office of Polar Programs (Grant Nos. ANT0631659 and ANT1056396).
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Communicated by S. Albers.
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Dolhi, J.M., Maxwell, D.P. & Morgan-Kiss, R.M. Review: the Antarctic Chlamydomonas raudensis: an emerging model for cold adaptation of photosynthesis. Extremophiles 17, 711–722 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00792-013-0571-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00792-013-0571-3