Abstract
In photosynthetic cells, chloroplasts migrate towards illuminated sites to optimize photosynthesis and move away from excessively illuminated areas to protect the photosynthetic machinery1. Although this movement of chloroplasts in response to light has been known for over a century, the photoreceptor mediating this process has not been identified. The Arabidopsis gene NPL1 (ref. 2) is a paralogue of the NPH1 gene, which encodes phototropin, a photoreceptor for phototropic bending3. Here we show that NPL1 is required for chloroplast relocation induced by blue light. A loss-of-function npl1 mutant showed no chloroplast avoidance response in strong blue light, whereas the accumulation of chloroplasts in weak light was normal. These results indicate that NPL1 may function as a photoreceptor mediating chloroplast relocation.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by grants to A.R.C. from NIH and DOE, and a NATO fellowship awarded to J.C. We thank N. Bonini and S. Poethig for comments on the manuscript.
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Figure 1.
Comparisons of conserved domains in NPL1 and other members of the NPH1 protein family. Sequence alignments of AtNPL1 (Accession number, AF053941), and AtNPH1 (Accession number, AF030864) from Arabidopsis thaliana, OsNPH1a (Accession number, AB018444.1), and OsNPH1b (Accession number, AB018443.1) from Oryza sativa, AsNPH1-1 (Accession number, AF033096), and AsNPH1-2 (Accession number, AF033097) from Avena sativa L., ZmNPH1 (Accession number, AF033263) from Zea mays, and AcNPH1-2 (Accession number, AB037188) from Adiantum capillus-veneris. The LOV domains are highlighted by a line below the sequence. A double line indicates the serine-threonine kinase domain. Asterisks represent the conserved cysteine residues involved in the photochemical reactions of the NPH1 LOV domains. (GIF 285 KB)
Figure 2.
Isolation and phenotypic characterization of npl1 mutant. a. NPL1 gene structure and T-DNA insertion mutant. The NPL1 gene that maps to the bottom of chromosome V, bears a coding region of 22 exons (represented by filled boxes) extending for 5.4 Kb. The npl1-1 mutant was identified by PCR-screening of 30,000 T-DNA insertion lines (Alonso and Ecker, unpublished), using oligonucleotides specific for the NPL1 gene and the T-DNA. By DNA sequencing of the amplified products, it was demonstrated that the insertion disrupted the NPL1 gene in the second intron (the site of the T-DNA insertion in the npl1 mutant is indicated). b. Northern blot hybridization with an NPL1 probe against RNA prepared from leaves of wild type (Columbia) and npl1mutant plants. The band in the wild type lane corresponded to a size of approximately 3 kb. No hybridization signal was detected for the mutant. (GIF 12 KB)
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Jarillo, J., Gabrys, H., Capel, J. et al. Phototropin-related NPL1 controls chloroplast relocation induced by blue light. Nature 410, 952–954 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/35073622
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/35073622
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