The bioenergetics of salt tolerance

The aim of this project was to try to understand the adaptive mechanisms that organisms develop in order to respond to a sudden transformation in their environment to a salt shock.'' To study this problem we used a fresh water oxygenic photosynthetic cyanobacterium known as Synecoccus 6311. This organism suffers injury after this sudden exposure to high concentrations of sodium chloride equivalent to or even higher than that in sea water. Yet they are able to re-establish their photosynthetic activity which is partially injured and return to virtually normal growth rates. Identification of the temporal sequence of changes involved in adaptation to this stress was the rationale. Indeed this project employed a wide variety of biochemical and biophysical methods, including electron spin resonance techniques and nuclear magnetic resonance to study the bioenergetics and transport mechanisms, growth and energy changes in these organisms and how the structural components of the cells changed in response to adaptation to growth at high salinity. The problem has relevance for higher plants because most of the arable farmland in the work is already under use and that which is not used is usually in salite environments. Hence, understanding basic mechanisms of salt tolerance is amore » fundamental biological problem with great applications for bioproductivity and agriculture. 18 refs.« less