Metabolic analysis of effects of sucrose translocation on phenotypic traits of Arabidopsis thaliana

Sucrose translocation between plant tissues is crucial for growth, development and reproduction of plants. Systemic analysis of this metabolic process and underlying regulatory processes can help to achieve better understanding of carbon distribution within the plant and the formation of phenotypic traits. Sucrose translocation from ‘source’ tissues (e.g. mesophyll) to ‘sink’ tissues (e.g. root) is tightly bound to the proton gradient across the membranes. The plant sucrose transporters are grouped into efflux exporters (SWEET family) and proton-symport importers (SUC, STP families). To better understand the regulatory connections between sucrose export from source tissues and sucrose import into sink tissues, there is a need for a metabolic model that takes in account the tissue organisation of Arabidopsis thaliana with corresponding metabolic specificities of respective tissues in terms of sucrose and proton production/utilization. An ability of the model to operate under different light modes (‘light’ and ‘dark’) and correspondingly in different energy producing modes is additional validating feature.