A chloroplast envelope glycolate transporter and its involvement in photorespiratory metabolism

In C₃ plants at ambient CO₂ levels, Rubisco’s oxygenation reaction occurs about once for every three carboxylation reactions. One of the oxygenation products, 2-phosphoglycolate, is rapidly dephosphorylated to glycolate which is toxic and inhibitory to photosynthesis. Glycolate has to be removed from the chloroplast for its subsequent metabolism. South et al. carried out a reverse genetics screen of genes that had been identified as encoding chloroplast membrane transporters. They found that a T-DNA insertion of the BASS6 gene leads to a photorespiratory mutant phenotype, and that the BASS6 protein encodes a glycolate transporter. This work can contribute to efforts to re-engineer plants to recycle glycolate more efficiently. Plant Cell ​10.​1105/​tpc.​16.​00775