The amount of light energy that is harvested and directed to the photosynthetic machinery is regulated in order to control the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in leaf tissues. ROS have important roles as signalling factors that instigate and mediate a range of cellular responses, suggesting that the mechanisms regulating light-harvesting and photosynthetic energy transduction also affect cell signalling. In this study, we exposed wild-type (WT) Arabidopsis and mutants impaired in the regulation of photosynthetic light-harvesting (stn7, tap38 and npq4) to transient high light (HL) stress in order to study the role of these mechanisms for up- and downregulation of gene expression under HL stress. The mutants, all of which have disturbed regulation of excitation energy transfer and distribution, responded to transient HL treatment with surprising similarity to the WT in terms of general 'abiotic stress-regulated' genes associated with hydrogen peroxide and 12-oxo-phytodienoic acid signalling. However, we identified distinct expression profiles in each genotype with respect to induction of singlet oxygen and jasmonic acid-dependent responses. The results of this study suggest that the control of excitation energy transfer interacts with hormonal regulation. Furthermore, the photosynthetic pigment-protein complexes appear to operate as receptors that sense the energetic balance between the photosynthetic light reactions and downstream metabolism.