Temperature dependence of respiration rates of leaves, 18O-experiments and super-Arrhenius kinetics

Temperature dependence of rates of respiration in the dark of leaves from a worldwide diffuse, evergreen plant, Camellia Japonica, was measured by mass spectrometry. Oxygen-18 isotopic labeling shows that consumption of O2 goes exclusively into water, demonstrating that this process and that of CO2 production occur separately in different areas of mitochondria, concerted by exchange of electrons and protons. The observed larger-than-normal acceleration of the global process as temperature increases is described consistently by a microscopic model inspired by recent case studies in materials science, implying a crucial role of transport for the coupling between oxygen reduction and carbon oxidation.