Sci. STKE, 20 March 2001 Plant Biology Avoiding the Noon Day Sun
Chloroplasts of the plant Arabidopsis convert light to metabolic
energy--up to a point. When the incident light is simply too
intense, the chloroplasts shuffle off to the sides of the cell
to find some shade near the adjacent cells' walls. Under more
moderate light conditions, the chloroplasts spread out over the
face of the cell to capture as many photons as possible. Kagawa
et al. have now identified a protein that helps regulate this
process, NPL1, that resembles a known blue-light photoreceptor.
Thus, the plant appears to fine-tune and protect its light-
harvesting capabilities by using photoreceptors to direct
subcellular compartmentalization. T. Kagawa, T. Sakai, N.
Suetsugu, K. Oikawa, S. Ishiguro, T. Kato, S. Tabata, K. Okada,
M. Wada, Arabidopsis NPL1: A phototropin homolog controlling the
chloroplast high-light avoidance response. Science 291,
2138-2141 (2001). [Abstract] [Full Text] Citation: Avoiding the
Noon Day Sun. Sci. STKE 2001,