Fischerella_psbA

This dataset is part of the submitted article "Compensatory transcriptional response of Fischerella thermalis to thermal damage of the photosynthetic electron transfer chain" by Vergara-Barros et al. to the journal Metabolites in Oct 2022. Here are the aligned sequences in FASTA format as well the ML tress in newick format. Also, for different psbA isoforms were performed individual alignments and Jalview figuers are also available for them. <br> The abstract of the article is as follows: Key organisms in the environment, such as oxygenic photosynthetic primary producers 14 (photosynthetic eukaryotes and cyanobacteria), are responsible for fixing most of the carbon glob-15 ally. However, they are affected by environmental conditions, such as temperature, which in turn 16 affect their distribution. Globally, the cyanobacterium Fischerella thermalis is one of the main primary 17 producers in terrestrial hot springs with thermal gradients up to 60°C, but the mechanisms by which 18 it maintains its photosynthetic activity at these high temperatures are not known. In this study, we 19 used molecular and bioinformatics approaches, in addition to photophysiological analyses, to de-20 termine the genetic activity related to the energy metabolism of F. thermalis both in situ and in cul-21 tures at high temperatures (40°C to 65°C). Our results show that photosynthesis of F. thermalis de-22 cays with temperature, while increased transcriptional activity of genes encoding photosystem II 23 reaction center proteins, such as PsbA (D1), could help overcome thermal damage up to 60°C. We 24 observed that F. thermalis tends to lose copies of the standard G4 D1 isoform while maintaining the 25 recently described D1INT isoform, suggesting a preference for photoresistant isoforms in response to 26 the thermal gradient. The transcriptional activity and metabolic characteristics of F. thermalis, as 27 measured by metatranscriptomics, further suggest that carbon metabolism functions in parallel 28 with photosynthesis to assist in obtaining energy at high temperatures where other photosynthetic 29 organisms cannot survive. This study revealed that F. thermalis uses several compensatory adapta-30 tions to cope with the harsh conditions of hot springs, including emerging evidence for mixotrophic 31 metabolism as potentially relevant to the thermotolerance of F. thermalis. Ultimately, this work in-32 creases our knowledge about thermal adaptation strategies in Cyanobacteria.