Copper economy in Chlamydomonas: prioritized allocation and reallocation of copper to respiration vs. photosynthesis.

ABSTRACT: Inorganic elements, although required only in trace amounts, permit life and primary productivity because of their functions in catalysis. Every organism has a minimal requirement of each metal based on the intracellular abundance of proteins that use inorganic cofactors, but elemental sparing mechanisms can reduce this quota. A well-studied copper-sparing mechanism that operates in microalgae faced with copper deficiency is the replacement of the abundant copper protein plastocyanin with a heme-containing substitute, cytochrome (Cyt) c6. This switch, which is dependent on a copper-sensing transcription factor, copper response regulator 1 (CRR1), dramatically reduces the copper quota. We show here that in a situation of marginal copper availability, copper is preferentially allocated from

SUBMITTER: Kropat J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4352834 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature