Hierarchy amongst photosynthetic acclimation responses for plant fitness

We have compared the seed production of Arabidopsis wild-type and mutant plants impaired in the regulation of the photosynthetic light reactions grown under natural conditions in the field. Mutant plants (npq4) lacking feedback de-excitation were, as previously demonstrated, severely affected in seed production. Seed sets of plants deficient in state transitions (stn7) were 19% smaller than those of wild-type plants, whereas plants missing the STN8 kinase required for the phosphorylation of the core photosystem II reaction centre polypeptides (stn8) had a normal seed production. Plants lacking both STN7 and STN8 kinases were strongly affected, indicating that these mutations act synergistically. In contrast, npq4 x stn7 double mutants had the same seed set as npq4 mutants.