Mutations in ClpC2/Hsp100 suppress the requirement for FtsH in thylakoid membrane biogenesis

The Arabidopsis var2 variegation mutant defines a nuclear gene for a chloroplast FtsH metalloprotease. Leaf variegation is expressed only in homozygous recessive plants. The cells in the green leaf sectors of this mutant contain morphologically normal chloroplasts, whereas cells in the white sectors contain abnormal plastids lacking organized lamellar structures. var2 mutants are hypersusceptible to photoinhibition, and VAR2 degrades unassembled polypeptides and is involved in the D1 repair cycle of photosystem II, likely by affecting turnover of the photodamaged D1 polypeptide. A second-site suppressor screen of var2 yielded a normal-appearing, nonvariegated line. Map-based cloning revealed that the suppression of variegation in this line is due to a splice site mutation in ClpC2 a chloroplast Hsp100 chaperone, that results in sharply reduced ClpC2 protein accumulation. Isolation of clpC2 single mutants showed that clpC2 is epistatic to var2, and that a lack of ClpC2 does not markedly alter the composition of the thylakoid membrane. Suppression by clpC2 is not allele-specific. Our results suggest that clpC2 is a suppressor of thylakoid biogenesis and maintenance and that ClpC2 might act by accelerating photooxidative stress. Arabidopsis has two ClpC genes (ClpC1 and ClpC2), and mutants with down-regulated expression of both genes have a phenotype different from clpC2, suggesting that ClpC1 and ClpC2 act synergistically and/or that they are only partially redundant. The isolation of a clpC2 mutant represents an important advance in the generation of tools to understand Hsp100 function and insight into the mechanisms of protein quality control in plants.