Abstract

The rate of photosynthesis and plant growth is often rate limited by the activity of the CO2 -fixing enzyme Ribulose bisphosphate carboxylase oxygenase (Rubisco). Over half a century there has been significant effort to understand the catalytic chemistry and biogenesis properties of this enzyme towards identifying ways to improve its carboxylation properties.

Kinetic diversity screens have identified natural variants of Rubisco with properties beneficial to photosynthesis in C3-plants like rice, wheat and canola, however there are impediments to introducing these changes into crops. In many cases the levels of catalytic improvement are also insufficient to translate to real improvements in growth. In this talk I will discuss new synthetic biology, plastome transformation and directed evolution methods that have proved a more feasible pathway towards generating the step change in Rubisco performance needed to visibly improve plant productivity.

Contact reception@plantsci.cam.ac.uk for a Zoom link prior to a talk if you are not on our mailing list. Due to having to go online, we are restricting the talks to University of Cambridge and alumni to keep them as informal as possible.