SUMMARY
Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are produced by and have the potential to be damaging to all aerobic organisms. In photosynthetic organisms, they are an unavoidable byproduct of electron transfer in both the chloroplast and mitochondrion. We employ the reference unicellular green alga, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, to identify the effect of H2O2 on gene expression by monitoring the transcriptome changes in a timecourse experiment. Comparison of transcriptomes from cells sampled immediately prior to addition of H2O2, and 0.5 and 1 h subsequently revealed 1278 differentially abundant transcripts. Of those transcripts that increase in abundance, many encode proteins involved in ROS detoxification, protein degradation and stress-responses, whereas among those that decrease are transcripts encoding proteins involved in photosynthesis and central carbon metabolism. In addition to these transcriptomic adjustments, we observe that H2O2 addition is followed by an accumulation and oxidation of the total intracellular glutathione pool, and a decrease in photosynthetic O2 output. Additionally, we analyze our transcriptomes in the context of transcript abundance changes in response to singlet O2 (O2*), and relate our H2O2-induced transcripts to a diurnal transcriptome, where we demonstrate enrichments of H2O2-induced transcripts early in the light phase, late in the light phase and 2 h prior to light. On this basis several genes that are highlighted in this work may be involved in previously undiscovered stress remediation pathways or acclimation responses.