PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Varsha S. Pathare
AU  - Robert J. DiMario
AU  - Nouria Koteyeva
AU  - Asaph B. Cousins
TI  - Mesophyll conductance response to short-term changes in CO<sub>2</sub> is related to leaf anatomy and biochemistry in diverse C<sub>4</sub> grasses
AID  - 10.1101/2021.10.03.462792
DP  - 2021 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2021.10.03.462792
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/10/04/2021.10.03.462792.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/10/04/2021.10.03.462792.full
AB  - Mesophyll CO2 conductance (gm) in C3 species responds to short-term (minutes) changes in environment potentially due to changes in some leaf anatomical and biochemical properties and due to measurement artifacts. Compared to C3 species, there is less information about gm responses to short-term changes in environment conditions like pCO2 across diverse C4 species and the potential determinants of these responses.Using 16 diverse C4 grasses we investigated the response of gm to short-term changes in CO2 and how this response related to the leaf anatomical and biochemical traits.For all the measured C4-grasses gm increased as CO2 decreased; however, the percent change in gm varied (+13% to +250%) and significantly related to percent changes in leaf transpiration efficiency (TEi). The percent increase in gm was highest in grasses with thinner mesophyll cell walls and greater leaf nitrogen, activities of phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase (PEPC), Rubisco and carbonic anhydrase, and a higher affinity of PEPC for bicarbonate.Our study demonstrates that CO2 response of gm varies greatly across diverse C4 grasses and identifies the key leaf anatomical and biochemical traits related to this variation. These findings have implications for improving C4 photosynthetic models, and in attempts to improve TEi through manipulation of gm.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.