Melatonin mediates elevated carbon dioxide-induced photosynthesis and thermotolerance in tomato.

Increasing carbon dioxide (CO ₂ ) promotes photosynthesis and mitigates heat stress-induced deleterious effects on plants, but the regulatory mechanisms remain largely unknown. Here, we found that tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) plants treated with high atmospheric CO ₂ concentrations (600, 800, and 1000 µmol mol ^-1 ) accumulated increased levels of melatonin (N-acetyl-5-methoxy tryptamine) in their leaves and this response is conserved across many plant species, including Arabidopsis, rice, wheat, mustard, cucumber, watermelon, melon, and hot pepper. Elevated CO ₂ (eCO ₂ ; 800 µmol mol ^-1 ) caused a 6.8-fold increase in leaf melatonin content, and eCO ₂ -induced melatonin biosynthesis preferentially occurred through chloroplast biosynthetic pathways in tomato plants. Crucially, manipulation of endogenous melatonin levels by genetic means affected the eCO ₂ -induced accumulation of sugar and starch in tomato leaves. Furthermore, net photosynthetic rate, maximum photochemical efficiency of photosystem II, and transcript levels of chloroplast- and nuclear-encoded photosynthetic genes, such as rbcL, rbcS, rbcA, psaD, petB, and atpA, significantly increased in COMT1 overexpressing (COMT1-OE) tomato plants, but not in melatonin-deficient comt1 mutants at eCO ₂ conditions. While eCO ₂ enhanced plant tolerance to heat stress (42°C) in wild-type and COMT1-OE, melatonin deficiency compromised eCO ₂ -induced thermotolerance in comt1 plants. The expression of heat shock proteins genes increased in COMT1-OE but not in comt1 plants in response to eCO ₂ under heat stress. Further analysis revealed that eCO ₂ -induced thermotolerance was closely linked to the melatonin-dependent regulation of reactive oxygen species, redox homeostasis, cellular protein protection, and phytohormone metabolism. This study unveiled a crucial mechanism of elevated CO ₂ -induced thermotolerance in which melatonin acts as an essential endogenous signaling molecule in tomato plants.
(© 2023 John Wiley & Sons A/S. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)