Making photosynthesis more efficient is a standing goal of plant productivity engineering. A line of research has been recently reported, taking place at Cornell University.
A plant enzyme, known as rubisco (short for ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase), is the enzyme that incorporates CO2 into plants during photosynthesis. As it constitutes about 30% of the total protein in a plant leaf, rubisco is probably the most abundant protein on Earth and a major sink for plant nitrogen.
All plants “breathe in” CO2, and rubisco transforms the atmospheric carbon dioxide into a biologically friendly form, which plants use to build their tissues.
However, since plants “breathe out” oxygen, which also interacts with rubisco, and this interaction produces toxic byproducts that slow down photosynthesis. Scientists have been working on methods to mitigate this process, with limited success.
In a new study, “Improving the efficiency of Rubisco by resurrecting its ancestors in the family Solanaceae,” published April 15 in the journal Science Advances, researchers at Cornell University have found a way to resurrect an ancient form of the enzyme, which promoted photosynthesis in plants millions of years ago, when Earth was experiencing one of its hottest climates in the last 50 million years, and with a much higher CO2 content than in the current atmosphere. [https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abm6871]
