Abstract
Photosynthesis is central to food production and the Earth's biogeochemistry, yet the molecular basis for its regulation remains poorly understood. Here, using high-throughput genetics in the model eukaryotic alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, we identify with high confidence (false discovery rate [FDR] < 0.11) 70 poorly characterized genes required for photosynthesis. We then enable the functional characterization of these genes by providing a resource of proteomes of mutant strains, each lacking one of these genes. The data allow assignment of 34 genes to the biogenesis or regulation of one or more specific photosynthetic complexes. Further analysis uncovers biogenesis/regulatory roles for at least seven proteins, including five photosystem I mRNA maturation factors, the chloroplast translation factor MTF1, and the master regulator PMR1, which regulates chloroplast genes via nuclear-expressed factors. Our work provides a rich resource identifying regulatory and functional genes and placing them into pathways, thereby opening the door to a system-level understanding of photosynthesis.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 5638-5655.e25 |
Journal | Cell |
Volume | 186 |
Issue number | 25 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 7 Dec 2023 |
Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2023 The Author(s)
Funding
We thank Michelle Warren-Williams for media preparation and propagating strains; the Princeton University genomics core facility and its manager Wei Wang for help with sequencing; Princeton University Confocal Microscopy manager Gary Laevsky for instrumentation support; members of the Jonikas laboratory and Felix Willmund for helpful discussions; Alexei V. Korennykh, Jin Du, Michael Estrella, and Kristina Solorio-Kirpichyan for providing NOCT protein; Olivier Vallon, Yana Kazachkova, Silvia Ramundo, Shan He, Alice Lunardon, Jessica H. Hennacy, Moritz T. Meyer, and Eric Franklin for feedback on the manuscript; and Marie Bao, as part of Life Science Editors, for help with editing the manuscript. Figure 3 A was created using BioRender.com . The project was funded by the Princeton Catalysis Initiative , U.S. National Institutes of Health grant R35GM128813 , U.S. National Foundation grant MCB-1914989 , EMBO fellowship ALTF 1006-2017 , HFSP fellowship LT000031/2018-L , HHMI/Simons Foundation grant 55108535 , and the Lewis-Sigler Scholars Fund . M.C.J. is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.
Funders | Funder number |
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Lewis-Sigler Scholars Fund | |
Princeton Catalysis Initiative | |
U.S. National Foundation | MCB-1914989 |
National Institutes of Health | R35GM128813 |
Howard Hughes Medical Institute | |
Simons Foundation | 55108535 |
European Molecular Biology Organization | ALTF 1006-2017 |
Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy |
Keywords
- RNA sequencing
- genetics
- methionyl-tRNA formyltransferase
- photosynthesis
- photosystem I maturation factors
- protein localization
- protein profiling
- retrograde regulation