Entries by Mae Mercado

CA-nundrum: How a spontaneous mutation in carbonic anhydrase uncouples leaf δ13C, WUE and C4 photosynthesis

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With climate change, drought is expected to happen more frequently, making supplemental irrigation increasingly necessary to sustain crop productivity. One target trait to improve climate resilience is water use efficiency (WUE), defined by the ratio of carbon assimilation to water used by the plant. However, directly measuring WUE is time consuming and low-throughput, highlighting the […]

Review: The complexities of metabolite transport in C4 photosynthesis

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C4 photosynthesis, an adaptive mechanism to spatially concentrate CO2 around Rubisco to enhance carbon fixation, has evolved independently at least 60 times in plants. This process spatially separates the initial carbon fixation by PEPC and carbon reduction by Rubisco, which requires that compounds move in and out of various organelles of mesophyll cells and bundle […]

Review: Genetic engineering for carbon assimilation in plants

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Rubisco (Ribulose‐1,5‐bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase) is the central enzyme for photosynthesis, This enzyme poorly discriminates between CO2 and O2, which limits its efficiency.  To work around this and make carbon assimilation more efficient, scientists have been employing different engineering strategies, several of which are summarized in a new review by Qin et al. One strategy is to alter […]