A long photoperiod relaxes energy management in Arabidopsis leaf six

Plants adapt to the prevailing photoperiod by adjusting growth and flowering to the availability of energy. To understand the molecular changes involved in adaptation to a long-day condition we comprehensively profiled leaf six at the end of the day and the end of the night at four developmental stages on Arabidopsis thaliana plants grown in a 16 h photoperiod, and compared the profiles to those from leaf 6 of plants grown in a 8 h photoperiod. When Arabidopsis is grown in a long-day photoperiod individual leaf growth is accelerated but whole plant leaf area is decreased because total number of rosette leaves is restricted by the rapid transition to flowering. Carbohydrate measurements in long- and short-day photoperiods revealed that a long photoperiod decreases the extent of diurnal turnover of carbon reserves at all leaf stages. At the transcript level we found that the long-day condition has significantly reduced diurnal transcript level changes than in short-day condition, and that some transcripts shift their diurnal expression pattern. Functional categorisation of the transcripts with significantly different levels in short and long day conditions revealed photoperiod-dependent differences in RNA processing and light and hormone signalling, increased abundance of transcripts for biotic stress response and flavonoid metabolism in long photoperiods, and for photosynthesis and sugar transport in short photoperiods. Furthermore, we found transcript level changes consistent with an early release of flowering repression in the long-day condition. Differences in protein levels between long and short photoperiods mainly reflect an adjustment to the faster growth in long photoperiods. In summary, the observed differences in the molecular profiles of leaf six grown in long- and short-day photoperiods reveal changes in the regulation of metabolism that allow plants to adjust their metabolism to the available light. The data also suggest that energy management is in the two photoperiods fundamentally different as a consequence of photoperiod-dependent energy constraints.