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Functional Plant Biology Functional Plant Biology Society
Plant function and evolutionary biology
RESEARCH ARTICLE

Deactivation of aquaporins decreases internal conductance to CO2 diffusion in tobacco leaves grown under long-term drought

Shin-Ichi Miyazawa A , Satomi Yoshimura A , Yuki Shinzaki A , Masayoshi Maeshima B and Chikahiro Miyake A C D
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A Research Institute of Innovative Technology for the Earth (RITE), 9-2 Kizugawadai, Kizugawa City, Kyoto 619-0292, Japan.

B Laboratory of Cell Dynamics, Graduate School of Bioagricultural Sciences, Nagoya University, Nagoya 464-8601, Japan.

C Present address: Laboratory of Plant Nutrition, Department of Biological and Environmental Science, Faculty of Agriculture, Graduate School of Agricultural Science, Kobe University, Nada, Kobe 657-8501, Japan.

D Corresponding author. Email: cmiyake@hawk.kobe-u.ac.jp

Functional Plant Biology 35(7) 553-564 https://doi.org/10.1071/FP08117
Submitted: 10 April 2008  Accepted: 3 June 2008   Published: 21 August 2008

Abstract

We compared the diffusion conductance to CO2 from the intercellular air space to the chloroplasts (internal conductance (g i)) between tobacco leaves acclimated to long-term drought (drought-acclimated (DA)) and those grown under sufficient irrigation (well-watered (WW)), and analysed the changes in g i in relation to the leaf anatomical characteristics and a possible CO2 transporter, aquaporin. The g i, which was estimated by combined analyses of CO2 gas exchange with chlorophyll fluorescence, in the DA plants was approximately half of that in the WW plants. The mesophyll and chloroplast surface areas exposing the intercellular air space, which potentially affect g i, were not significantly different between the WW and DA plants. The amounts of plasma membrane aquaporins (PIP), immunochemically determined using radish PIP antibodies, were unrelated to g i. After treatment with HgCl2, an aquaporin inhibitor, the water permeability of the leaf tissues (measured as the weight loss of fully-turgid leaf disks without the abaxial epidermis in 1 m sorbitol) in WW plants decreased with an increase in HgCl2 concentration. The g i in the WW plants decreased to similar levels to the DA plants when the detached leaflets were fed with 0.5 mm HgCl2. In contrast, both water permeability and g i were insensitive to HgCl2 treatments in DA plants. These results suggest that deactivation of aquaporins is responsible for the significant reduction in g i observed in plants growing under long-term drought.

Additional keywords: acclimation, drought stress, leaf anatomy, mesophyll conductance.


Acknowledgements

S.-I. Miyazawa thanks Professor Ichiro Terashima for his constructive comments on early drafts of this manuscript and also Dr Hiroshi Yamamoto for his helpful suggestions. We also thank the anonymous reviewers for their advice. This work was supported by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), Japan.


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