TY - JOUR AU - Shin, Seung Yong AU - Park, Ji-Sun AU - Park, Hye-Bin AU - Moon, Ki-Beom AU - Kim, Hyun-Soon AU - Jeon, Jae-Heung AU - Cho, Hye Sun AU - Lee, Hyo-Jun PY - 2021 M3 - Original Research TI - FERONIA Confers Resistance to Photooxidative Stress in Arabidopsis JO - Frontiers in Plant Science UR - https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpls.2021.714938 VL - 12 SN - 1664-462X N2 - Plants absorb light energy required for photosynthesis, but excess light can damage plant cells. To protect themselves, plants have developed diverse signaling pathways which are activated under high-intensity light. Plant photoprotection mechanisms have been mainly investigated under conditions of extremely high amount of light; thus, it is largely unknown how plants manage photooxidative damage under moderate light intensities. In the present study, we found that FERONIA (FER) is a key protein that confers resistance to photooxidative stress in plants under moderate light intensity. FER-deficient mutants were highly susceptible to increasing light intensity and exhibited photobleaching even under moderately elevated light intensity (ML). Light-induced expression of stress genes was largely diminished by the fer-4 mutation. In addition, excitation pressure on Photosystem II was significantly increased in fer-4 mutants under ML. Consistently, reactive oxygen species, particularly singlet oxygen, accumulated in fer-4 mutants grown under ML. FER protein abundance was found to be elevated after exposure to ML, which is indirectly affected by the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway. Altogether, our findings showed that plants require FER-mediated photoprotection to maintain their photosystems even under moderate light intensity. ER -