Nitrite Reductase Mutants As an Approach to Understanding Nitrate Assimilation in Chlamydomonas Reinhardtii

Overview

Journal Plant Physiol

Specialty Physiology

Date 2000 Jan 13

PMID 10631272

Citations 9

Authors

M T Navarro

E Guerra

E Fernandez

A Galvan

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

We constructed mutant strains lacking the nitrite reductase (NR) gene in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. Two types of NR mutants were obtained, which either have or lack the high-affinity nitrate transporter (Nrt2;1, Nrt2;2, and Nar2) genes. None of these mutants overexpressed nitrate assimilation gene transcripts nor NR activity in nitrogen-free medium, in contrast to NR mutants. This finding confirms the previous role proposed for NR on its own regulation (autoregulation) and on the other genes for nitrate assimilation in C. reinhardtii. In addition, the NR mutants were used to study nitrate transporters from nitrite excretion. At high CO(2), only strains carrying the above high-affinity nitrate transporter genes excreted stoichiometric amounts of nitrite from 100 microM nitrate in the medium. A double mutant, deficient in both the high-affinity nitrate transporter genes and NR, excreted nitrite at high CO(2) only when nitrate was present at mM concentrations. This suggests that there exists a low-affinity nitrate transporter that might correspond to the nitrate/nitrite transport system III. Moreover, under low CO(2) conditions, the double mutant excreted nitrite from nitrate at micromolar concentrations by a transporter with the properties of the nitrate/nitrite transport system IV.

Citing Articles

Nitrous Oxide Emissions from Nitrite Are Highly Dependent on Nitrate Reductase in the Microalga .

Bellido-Pedraza C, Calatrava V, Llamas A, Fernandez E, Sanz-Luque E, Galvan A Int J Mol Sci. 2022; 23(16).

PMID: 36012676 PMC: 9409008. DOI: 10.3390/ijms23169412.

Phylogenomic and Microsynteny Analysis Provides Evidence of Genome Arrangements of High-Affinity Nitrate Transporter Gene Families of Plants.

Zoghbi-Rodriguez N, Gamboa-Tuz S, Pereira-Santana A, Rodriguez-Zapata L, Sanchez-Teyer L, Echevarria-Machado I Int J Mol Sci. 2021; 22(23).

PMID: 34884876 PMC: 8658032. DOI: 10.3390/ijms222313036.

Understanding nitrate assimilation and its regulation in microalgae.

Sanz-Luque E, Chamizo-Ampudia A, Llamas A, Galvan A, Fernandez E Front Plant Sci. 2015; 6:899.

PMID: 26579149 PMC: 4620153. DOI: 10.3389/fpls.2015.00899.

Nitric oxide-triggered remodeling of chloroplast bioenergetics and thylakoid proteins upon nitrogen starvation in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii.

Wei L, Derrien B, Gautier A, Houille-Vernes L, Boulouis A, Saint-Marcoux D Plant Cell. 2014; 26(1):353-72.

PMID: 24474630 PMC: 3963581. DOI: 10.1105/tpc.113.120121.

Achieving pH control in microalgal cultures through fed-batch addition of stoichiometrically-balanced growth media.

Scherholz M, Curtis W BMC Biotechnol. 2013; 13:39.

PMID: 23651806 PMC: 3751429. DOI: 10.1186/1472-6750-13-39.

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