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

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