The initiation of nocturnal dormancy in Synechococcus as an active process.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Most organisms, especially photoautotrophs, alter their behaviours in response to day-night alternations adaptively because of their great reliance on light. Upon light-to-dark transition, dramatic and universal decreases in transcription level of the majority of the genes in the genome of the unicellular cyanobacterium, Synechococcus elongatus PCC 7942 are observed. Because Synechococcus is an obligate photoautotroph, it has been generally assumed that repression of the transcription in the dark (dark repression) would be caused by a nocturnal decrease in photosynthetic activities through the reduced availability of energy (e.g. adenosine triphosphate (ATP)) needed for mRNA synthesis.

Results

However, against this general assumption, we obtained evidence that the

SUBMITTER: Takano S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4494158 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature