Title: Ironing out metabolic wrinkles in nutrient deficient Chlamydomonas
Iron is an essential nutrient for virtually all forms of life because of its role in bioenergetic
processes and oxygen chemistry, and its reduced bioavailability after the great oxidation
event limits life. Therefore, most organisms have mechanisms for handling nutritional
iron deficiency and their metabolism can acclimate to this situation. We used growth,
classical visual symptoms of iron-deficiency and sentinel gene expression to define 4
physiological “states” of iron nutrition. Transcriptome and proteome profiles of these
states indicate the importance of plastid anti-oxidant pathways for handling iron
imbalance, reveal previously uncharacterized transporters and novel enzymes that are
conserved throughout the plant kingdom