Turgor pressure changes trigger characteristic changes in the electrical conductance of the tonoplast and the plasmalemma of the marine alga Valonia utricularis

The giant marine alga Valonia utricularis is capable of regulating its turgor pressure in response to changes in the osmotic pressure of the sea water. The turgor pressure response comprises two phases, a fast, exponential phase arising exclusively from water shifting between the vacuole and the external medium (time constant about 10 min) and a second very slow, almost exponential phase adjusting (but not always) the turgor pressure near to the original value by release or uptake of KCl (time constant about 5 h). The changes in the vacuolar membrane potential as well as in the individual conductances of the tonoplast and plasmalemma accompanying turgor pressure regulation were measured by using the vacuolar perfusion assembly (with integrated microelectrodes, pressure transducers and pressure-regulating valves) as described by Wang et al. ( 1997). Measurements on pressure-clamped cells gave strong evidence that the turgor pressure, but not effects related to water flow (i.e. electro-osmosis or streaming potential) or changes in the internal osmotic pressure and in the osmotic gradients, triggers the cascade of osmotic and electrical events recorded after disturbance of the osmotic equilibrium. The findings definitely exclude the existence of osmosensors as postulated for other plant cells and bacteria. There was also evidence that turgor pressure signals were primarily sensed by ion transporters in the vacuolar membrane because conductance changes were first recorded in the many-folded tonoplast and then significantly delayed in the plasmalemma independent of the direction of the osmotic challenge. Consistently, turgor pressure up-regulation (but not down-regulation) could be inhibited reversibly by external addition of the K+ transport inhibitor Ba2+ and/or by the Cl– transport inhibitor 4,4′-diisothiocyanatostilbene-2,2′-disulfonic acid (DIDS). Extensive studies under iso-, hyper- and hypo-osmotic conditions revealed that K+ and Cl– contribute predominantly to the plasmalemma conductance. Addition of 0.3 mm NaCN showed further that part of the K+ and Cl– transporters depended on ATP. These transporters are apparently up-regulated upon hyper-osmotic, but not hypo-osmotic challenge. These findings explain the strong increase of the K+ influx upon lowering turgor pressure and the less pronounced pressure-dependence of the Cl– influx of V. utricularis reported in the literature. The data derived from the blockage experiments under hypo-osmotic conditions were also equally consistent with the experimental findings that the K+ efflux is solely passive and progressively increases with increasing turgor pressure due to an increase of the volumetric elastic modulus of the cell wall. However, despite unravelling some of the sequences and other components involved in turgor pressure regulation of V. utricularis the co-ordination between the ion transporters in the tonoplast and plasmalemma remains unresolved because of the failure to block the tonoplast transporters by addition of Ba2+ and DIDS from the vacuolar side.

Field of study: Environmental science