Photosynthesis and chloroplast redox signaling in the age of global warming: stress tolerance, acclimation, and developmental plasticity

Abstract

Contemporary climate change is characterized by the increased intensity and frequency of environmental stress events such as floods, droughts, and heatwaves, which have a debilitating impact on photosynthesis and growth, compromising the production of food, feed, and biofuels for an expanding population. The need to increase crop productivity in the context of global warming has fueled attempts to improve several key plant features such as photosynthetic performance, assimilate partitioning, and tolerance to environmental stresses. Chloroplast redox metabolism, including photosynthetic electron transport and CO2 reductive assimilation, are primary targets of most stress conditions, leading to excessive excitation pressure, photodamage, and propagation of reactive oxygen species. Alterations in chloroplast redox poise, in turn, provide signals that exit the plastid and modulate plant responses to the environmental conditions. Understanding the molecular mechanisms involved in these processes could provide novel tools to increase crop yield in suboptimal environments. We describe herein various interventions into chloroplast redox networks that resulted in increased tolerance to multiple sources of environmental stress. They included manipulation of endogenous components and introduction of electron carriers from other organisms, which affected not only stress endurance but also leaf size and longevity. The resulting scenario indicates that chloroplast redox pathways have an important impact on plant growth, development, and defense that goes beyond their roles in primary metabolism. Manipulation of these processes provides additional strategies for the design of crops with improved performance under destabilized climate conditions as foreseen for the future.