A model for photosynthetic oscillations in crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM)

Abstract

We propose a model of crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM) describing the varying concentrations of pools of major metabolites by a system of coupled nonlinear differential equations. The model shows regular oscillations in normal day night and free-running endogeneous oscillations in continuous light. The effect of temperature is incorporated in a realistic way. It leads to the correct dependence of the oscillatory period length on temperature as compared to experimental observations.