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Physiological and biochemical characterization of sheepgrass (Leymus chinensis) reveals insights into photosynthetic apparatus coping with low-phosphate stress conditions

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Abstract

Sheepgrass [Leymus chinensis (Trin.) Tzvel] is a valuble forage plant highly significant to regional grassland productivity of Euro-Asia steppes. Although effects of environmental stress including drought have been studied, impact of nutrient deficiency in particular phosphate (Pi), one of the essential macronutrient, is not reported. Here, we investigated low-Pi effect on its photosynthetic apparatus via physiological and biochemical analysis. We show that PSII activity was significantly reduced based on chlorophyll fluorescence measurements. We observed decreased amount of core proteins of PSII by immunoblot analysis. Further analysis of thylakoid membranes using 2D-BN/SDS-PAGE and immunoblot detection demonstrated that the amount of PSII complexes was closely correlated with the Pi levels within the range. Together with reduced number of thylakoid grana stackings observed, we suggest that the maintenance of PSII is impaired under Pi-limited condition. Moreover, enzyme activity assays revealed that the activity of several ROS scavenger enzymes was stimulated by low-Pi treatment. Based on these experimental results we conclude that PSII is the component of photosynthetic apparatus most sensitive to Pi supply and the enhanced anti-ROS activity is mainly subjective to protection of PSII against low Pi-induced photo-oxidative stress in the organism.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Photobiology, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100093, China

    Lingyu Li, Haomeng Yang, Bei Liu, Dongmei Cheng, Lianwei Peng & Fang Huang

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Lingyu Li, Bei Liu & Dongmei Cheng

  3. Institute of Grassland Research, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science, Hohhot, China

    Weibo Ren & Xinhong Wu

  4. College of Resources Science and Technology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China

    Jirui Gong

Authors
  1. Lingyu Li
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  2. Haomeng Yang
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  3. Weibo Ren
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  4. Bei Liu
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  5. Dongmei Cheng
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  6. Xinhong Wu
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  7. Jirui Gong
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  8. Lianwei Peng
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  9. Fang Huang
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Correspondence to Fang Huang.

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These authors contributed equally to this work.

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Li, L., Yang, H., Ren, W. et al. Physiological and biochemical characterization of sheepgrass (Leymus chinensis) reveals insights into photosynthetic apparatus coping with low-phosphate stress conditions. J. Plant Biol. 59, 336–346 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12374-016-0117-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12374-016-0117-1

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