Regulation of Photosynthesis

This text provides final year undergraduates, graduate students and researchers with a state-of-the-art overview of regulatory mechanisms governing the development, function, turnover and stress tolerance of the photosynthetic apparatus. The structural components of the photosynthetic apparatus are relatively well known and the next challenge will be to resolve the multitude of the regulatory functions occurring in chloroplasts at the molecular level. The book is divided into five sections. The first section examines the expression of photosynthesis-related genes, including signal transduction and redox regulation at both the transcriptional and translational levels. The second section focuses on the biogenesis, turnover and senescence of the thylakoid pigment protein complexes. The third section examines crucial regulatory steps in carbon metabolism including those in the ferredoxin-thioredoxin system. Various molecular mechanisms leading to acclimation and stress responses in chloroplasts are reviewed in the fourth section. The fifth section provides examples of novel methods that have become available with information obtained from sequencing programmes of photosynthetic organisms and which are now becoming crucial tools also in the studies of photosynthetic regulation.