Cryptochromes: How Blue Light Perception Influences Plant Physiology

Abstract

Light plays a pivotal role in several physiological processes during plant growth, development and adaptation. Plants sense and respond to fluctuating light conditions using various photoreceptors such as phytochromes, cryptochromes and phototropins. In particular, cryptochromes are able to monitor, capture and transmit the stimuli of UVA/blue light in order to promote photomorphogenesis and regulate many aspects of plant development and growth including seed germination and seedling de‐etiolation, flowering induction, circadian rhythms and stress responses. Cryptochromes influence all these processes by modulating the expression pattern of several genes; such massive regulation is fundamental for optimising all physiological properties of plants throughout their life cycle. Key Concepts Light is essential for plant life. Plants use photoreceptors to sense and monitor quality, direction, intensity and length of light stimulus. Cryptochromes play fundamental roles in plant development. Cryptochromes are highly conserved among plant species. Cryptochromes regulate many light‐dependent physiological processes.

Cryptochromes and the Circadian Clock: The Story of a Very Complex Relationship in a Spinning World

“…CRYs subfamilies and their composition, such as a number of paralogous genes, are species-specific. An exhaustive list of the CRYs subfamilies identified in model species was reported by Fantini and Facella [ 39 ]. Moreover, a comprehensive screening of available genomic resources and phylogenetic analysis, identified CRY paralogs in different plant species and highlighted that CRY1 subfamily is present in all the phyla analysed, while CRY2 only belongs to Magnoliophyta and CRY3 is not present in Pteridophyta [ 39 ].…”

“…An exhaustive list of the CRYs subfamilies identified in model species was reported by Fantini and Facella [ 39 ]. Moreover, a comprehensive screening of available genomic resources and phylogenetic analysis, identified CRY paralogs in different plant species and highlighted that CRY1 subfamily is present in all the phyla analysed, while CRY2 only belongs to Magnoliophyta and CRY3 is not present in Pteridophyta [ 39 ]. Recently, a thorough genome-wide search performed by Cao and co-authors using the Arabidopsis CRY amino acid sequence as query search against different genome data sets, identified CRY genes in different plant species [ 40 ]; a total of 94 CRY1 and 68 CRY2 candidate genes were retrieved from 58 and 50 plant genomes, respectively [ 40 ].…”