N6-methyladenosine RNA modification regulates photosynthesis during photodamage in plants

N6-methyladenosine (m6A) modification of mRNAs affects many biological processes. However, the function of m6A in plant photosynthesis remains unknown. Here, we demonstrate that m6A modification is crucial for photosynthesis during photodamage caused by high light stress in plants. The m6A modification levels of numerous photosynthesis-related transcripts are changed after high light stress. We determine that the Arabidopsis m6A writer VIRILIZER (VIR) positively regulates photosynthesis, as its genetic inactivation drastically lowers photosynthetic activity and photosystem protein abundance under high light conditions. The m6A levels of numerous photosynthesis-related transcripts decrease in vir mutants, extensively reducing their transcript and translation levels, as revealed by multi-omics analyses. We demonstrate that VIR associates with the transcripts of genes encoding proteins with functions related to photoprotection (such as HHL1, MPH1, and STN8) and their regulatory proteins (such as regulators of transcript stability and translation), promoting their m6A modification and maintaining their stability and translation efficiency. This study thus reveals an important mechanism for m6A-dependent maintenance of photosynthetic efficiency in plants under high light stress conditions. Efficient photoprotection is vital for the maintenance of photosynthetic efficiency during photodamage. Here, the authors reveal that m6A writer VIRILIZER acts as a molecular switch of photoprotection by post-transcriptional regulation in plants.

• Publication year

  2022

• Venue

  Nature Communications

• Publication date

  2022-12-01

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1038/s41467-022-35146-zPMID 36460653PMCID 9718803
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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