a b s t r a c tCyanobacteria are significant contributors to global photosynthetic productivity, thus making it relevant to study how the different environmental stresses can alter their physiological activities. Here, we review the current research work on the response of cyanobacteria to different kinds of stress, mainly focusing on their response to metal stress as studied by using the modern proteomic tools. We also report a proteomic analysis of plastocyanin and cytochrome c 6 deletion mutants of the cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 grown under copper or iron deprivation, as compared to wild-type cells, so as to get a further understanding of the metal homeostasis in cyanobacteria and their response to changing environmental conditions.

Cyanobacteria, which are considered to be the chloroplast precursors, are significant contributors to global photosynthetic productivity. The ample variety of membrane and soluble proteins containing different metals (mainly, iron and copper) has made these organisms develop a complex homeostasis with different mechanisms and tight regulation processes to fulfil their metal requirements in a changing environment. Cell metabolism is so adapted as to synthesize alternative proteins depending on the relative metal availabilities. In particular, plastocyanin, a copper protein, and cytochrome c(6), a haem protein, can replace each other to play the same physiological role as electron carriers in photosynthesis and respiration, with the synthesis of one protein or another being regulated by copper concentration in the medium. The unicellular cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 has been widely used as a model system because of completion of its genome sequence and the ease of its genetic manipulation, with a lot of proteomic work being done. In this review article, we focus on the functional characterization of knockout Synechocystis mutants for plastocyanin and cytochrome c(6), and discuss the ongoing proteomic analyses performed at varying copper concentrations to investigate the cyanobacterial metal homeostasis and cell response to changing environmental conditions.