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LIGHT ADAPTATIONS. “Finally, seagrasses are able to activate different mechanisms to cope with conditions of light-limitation and shifted light spectrum through long-lasting metabolic adjustments including down-regulation of RuBisCO, enhanced proteolysis and putative changes in the antenna complex.” http://bmcevolbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2148-11-8 View in LinkedIn

VARIED SYSTEMS. “Seagrasses have long been regarded as C3 plants, but physiological measurements have gathered indications that several seagrass species, including Z. marina, are C3-C4 intermediates or have various carbon-concentrating mechanisms to aid the RuBisCO enzyme in carbon acquisition.” http://bmcevolbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2148-11-8 View in LinkedIn

ALTERNATE CARBON. “The two seagrass species under investigation, Z. marina and P. oceanica, are known to utilize bicarbonate (HCO−3) as a major source of inorganic carbon as a major source of inorganic carbon for photosynthesis.” http://bmcevolbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2148-11-8 View in LinkedIn

CO2 METABOLISM. “While CO2 can readily diffuse from the air through the stomata to the mesophyll cells in terrestrial plants, aquatic plants often have limited CO2 diffusion rates. Factors contributing to slow CO2 diffusion in aquatic plants (and especially in seagrasses) are thick boundary layers around the leaves that are sometimes amplified by the presence of unicellular or multicellular photosynthetic epiphytes that compete for CO2 and the low rate of CO2 transport in water.” http://bmcevolbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2148-11-8 View in LinkedIn

METABOLIC ADAPTATIONS. “Seven PSGs were related to the photosynthetic pathway and may reflect adaptations to new conditions of carbon fixation and photosynthesis that seagrasses had to face after their split from a terrestrial ancestor. Fixation of CO2 is expected to be more difficult for seagrasses since seawater contains very little dissolved carbon dioxide.” (PSGs= positively selected genes). http://bmcevolbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2148-11-8 View in LinkedIn

SEAGRASS FAILSAFES. “In A. thaliana, on average four gene copies encode for any of the approximately 80 different ribosomal proteins. This redundancy may reflect the importance of maintaining highly productive translation and protein synthesis.” http://bmcevolbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2148-11-8 View in LinkedIn

SEAGRASS TRANSLATION. “Ten PSGs were found to be ribosomal proteins involved in translation. From an evolutionary point of view, translation is an ancient cellular process, and high selection pressure is expected to act against deleterious mutations, as ribosome functioning affects virtually all cellular processes.” (PSGs= positively selected genes). http://bmcevolbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2148-11-8 View in LinkedIn

FERMENTATIVE METABOLISM. “In darkness, seagrasses can even be forced to switch to fermentative metabolism. In P. oceanica, malate has previously been shown to accumulate as a consequence of anoxic conditions. Hence, the positive selection of these three glycolysis genes may be associated with seagrass-specific adaptation to anaerobiosis.” http://bmcevolbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2148-11-8 View in LinkedIn

SEAGRASS ENZYMES. “With two fructose-bisphosphate aldolase enzymes and a malate dehydrogenase, the list of PSGs contains three enzymes of the glycolysis pathway. This observation may be particularly significant due to the challenges imposed by the O2 sink created by the reductive sediment leading to compensation by internal transport of oxygen from shoot to root tissues during the day cycle.” (PSGs= positively selected genes). http://bmcevolbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2148-11-8 View in LinkedIn