Xinyu Fu

Photorespiration is an essential process juxtaposed between plant carbon and nitrogen metabolism that responds to dynamic environments. Photorespiration recycles inhibitory intermediates arising from oxygenation reactions catalysed by Rubisco back into the C3 cycle, but it is unclear what proportions of its nitrogen-containing intermediates (glycin...

The metabolic intermediate acetyl-coenzyme A (acetyl-CoA) links anabolic and catabolic processes and coordinates metabolism with cellular signaling by influencing protein acetylation. In this study we demonstrate that in Arabidopsis thaliana, two distinctly localized acetate-activating enzymes, ACETYL-COA SYNTHETASE (ACS) in plastids and ACETATE NO...

Respiration in the light (RL) releases CO2 in photosynthesizing leaves and is a phenomenon that occurs independently from photorespiration. Since RL lowers net carbon fixation, understanding RL could help improve plant carbon-use efficiency and models of crop photosynthesis. Although RL was identified more than 75 years ago, its biochemical mechani...

Isotopically nonstationary metabolic flux analysis (INST-MFA) is a powerful technique for studying plant central metabolism, which involves introducing a 13CO2 tracer to plant leaves and sampling the labeled metabolic intermediates during the transient period before reaching an isotopic steady state. The metabolic intermediates involved in the C3 c...

Leaf-level gas exchange is widely used to investigate the largest carbon fluxes in illuminated leaves, offering a nondestructive way to investigate the impact of photorespiration on plant carbon balance. Modern commercial gas exchange systems allow high temporal resolution measurements under changing environments, aiding the development of nonstead...

Daylength, a seasonal and latitudinal variable, exerts a substantial impact on plant growth. However, the relationship between daylength and growth is non-proportional, suggesting the existence of adaptive mechanisms. Thus, our study aimed to comprehensively investigate the adaptive strategies employed by plants in response to daylength variation....

The initial reaction of CO2 fixation has a shared specificity with oxygen, resulting in the formation of 2-phosphoglycolate, an inhibitory sugar. 2-phosphoglycolate is detoxified by photorespiration, but this recycling requires energy and releases carbon, substantially reducing rates of net CO2 fixation in many crop plants. Many strategies are in d...

Hypoxic stress, caused by the low cellular oxygen in the events of flooding or waterlogging, limits crop productivity in many regions of the world. Hypoxic stress in plants is often dynamic and followed by a reoxygenation process that returns the oxygen level to normal. Although metabolic responses to hypoxia have been studied in many plants, less...

Photorespiration is a dynamic process that is intimately linked to photosynthetic carbon assimilation. There is a growing interest in understanding carbon assimilation during dynamic conditions, but the role of photorespiration under these dynamic conditions is unclear. In this review, we discuss recent work relevant to the function of photorespira...

The microalga Chlorella sorokiniana has attracted much attention for lipid production and wastewater treatment. It can perform photosynthesis and organic carbon utilization concurrently. To understand its phototrophic metabolism, a biomass compositional analysis, a ¹³C metabolic flux analysis, and metabolite pool size analyses were performed. Under...

Abiotic stresses rewire plant central metabolism to maintain metabolic and energy homeostasis. Metabolites involved in the plant central metabolic network serve as a hub for regulating carbon and energy metabolism under various stress conditions. In this review, we introduce recent metabolomics techniques used to investigate the dynamics of metabol...

Plants have evolved different developmental patterns of photosynthetic capacity to better adapt to changing environmental conditions. Natural variation in photosynthetic development offers great potential for improving crop productivity. In this study, leaf developmental patterns were characterized in three woody fruit tree species with distinct ph...

Given their ability to harness chemical energy from the sun and generate the organic compounds necessary for life, photosynthetic organisms have the unique capacity to act simultaneously as their own power and manufacturing plant. This dual capacity presents many unique challenges, chiefly that energy supply must be perfectly balanced with energy d...

Acyl carrier protein (ACP) is a highly conserved cofactor protein that is required by Type II fatty acid synthases (FAS). Here, we demonstrate that up to three mitochondrial ACP (mtACP) isoforms support the Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) mitochondrially-localized Type II FAS. The physiological importance of the three mtACPs was evaluated by cha...

The visualization of foliage color in plants provides immediate insight into some of the compounds that exist in the leaf. However, many non-colored compounds are also present; their cellular distributions are not readily identifiable optically. In this study we evaluate the applicability of mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) via electrospray laser de...

In this study, leaf greenness (determined with a SPAD meter), photosynthesis, and chlorophyll fluorescence were analyzed on mature sun leaves in different litchi (Litchi chinensis Sonn.) cultivars to obtain an understanding of the relationship between leaf greenness and photosynthetic characteristics. Leaf greenness differed significantly among the...

Annona atemoya Hort cv. African Pride (AP) is highly valued due to its high quality and unique flavor, but highly susceptible to water-logging. Prevalence of root diseases in saturated soils is one of the main problems in production, which restricts the development of AP in south China, where flooding frequently occurs in rainy sea-sons. However, s...

Commercial annona varieties, such as cherimoya (Annona cherimola Mill.), sugar apple (A. squamosa) and atemoya (A. squamosa × A. cherimola), are generally grown on seedling rootstocks and very susceptible to water-logging, even for short periods. Annona atemoya Hort cv. African Pride (AP) was introduced to China in 1980s, and became popular due to...