Summary
The observation that even drastic over- or underexpression of nitrate reductase (NR) has little effect on biomass production suggests that nitrate reduction in situ and extractable NR activity are not strictly coupled. Rates of nitrate reduction in detached spinach leaves are often, but not always, much lower than NR activity measured in leaf extracts under substrate (nitrate and NADH) saturation. This discrepancy between in vivo and in vitro rates is absent when leaves are illuminated for up to 2 h in high CO2 becomes obvious when leaves are illuminated in air, and is extremely high when leaves are kept in the dark and NR is artificially activated by anoxia or other treatments. Feeding nitrate through the leaf petiole, which increases the leaf nitrate content, improves nitrate reduction rates in the light (in air) only after several hours. Literature data on cytosolic nitrate concentrations, and measurements of nitrate leakage from leaf discs into nitrate-free solutions, suggest that that cytosolic nitrate is usually not limiting for nitrate reduction in situ. Rather, reductant (NADH) concentration appears to be the limiting factor whenever photosynthesis is suboptimal or absent. This may explain in part why over- or underexpression of NR in transgenic plants has surprisingly little effect on vegetative growth.
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Kaiser, W.M., Stoimenova, M., Man, HM. (2002). What Limits Nitrate Reduction in Leaves?. In: Foyer, C.H., Noctor, G. (eds) Photosynthetic Nitrogen Assimilation and Associated Carbon and Respiratory Metabolism. Advances in Photosynthesis and Respiration, vol 12. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-306-48138-3_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/0-306-48138-3_5
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