Recent Posts

Establishment of photosynthesis is controlled by two distinct regulatory phases ($)

Chloroplast biogenesis and leaf development are closely linked processes that have been difficult to tease apart, until recently. Dubreuil et al. used a pluripotent inducible cell line from Arabidopsis, basically plant stem cells, which develop chloroplasts on demand when exposed to light. Using this…

Temporal and spatial transcriptomic and miRNA dynamics of CAM photosynthesis in pineapple ($)

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CAM (crassulacean acid metabolism) is the form of photosynthesis in which carbon assimilation occurs at night. CAM allows plants, especially those growing in arid regions, to avoid excessive water loss. With the long-term goal of eventually engineering this water-conserving trait into crop plants, Wai…

Mechanism of enzyme repair by the AAA+ chaperone Rubisco activase ($)

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Rubisco is a fascinating enzyme, which in plants is a hexadecamer made up of eight large (RbcL) and eight small (RbcS) subunits. The catalytic sites are buried within the enzyme at the interfaces between pairs of RbcL subunits. Rubisco catalyzes the first step in the carbon-fixing photosynthetic reactions,…

Special meeting issue, “Enhancing photosynthesis in crop plants: targets for improvement” ($)

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Here’s a great collection of articles that consider various approaches to increase crop productivity through enhancements to photosynthesis. The authors of the papers in this collection include many of  the leading photosynthesis researchers, and the topics include structural and architectural improvements…

Leaf Photosynthesis and Biomass Accumulation

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Improving photosynthetic efficiency is a major target for increasing crop biomass production and yield potential. The canopy photosynthetic efficiency, which is determined by leaf area index, canopy architecture, and leaf photosynthetic properties, plays an important role in determining biomass accumulation.…

Enhancing Electron Transport Leads to Improved Yields

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Increasing photosynthetic capacity appears to be a viable route towards increasing crop yields. An endogenous target identified for manipulation toward this goal is the cytochrome b6f (cyt b6f) complex that is located in the thylakoid membrane and which functions in both linear and cyclic electron transport,…

Letters to the Editor: Does C4 photosynthesis occur in wheat seeds?

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In 2016, Rangan et al. reported on “New evidence for grain specific C4 photosynthesis in wheat,” but later that year Busch and Farquhar responded with “Poor evidence for C4 photosynthesis in the wheat grain.” Now these two groups continue their arguments for and against wheat seed C4 photosynthesis,…

Structure of a symmetric photosynthetic reaction center–photosystem ($)

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Plants, green algae and cyanobacteria carry out oxygenic photosynthesis through the coordination of two photosystems, PSI and PSII. Many other photosynthetic prokaryotes use a single reaction center to carry out anoxygenic photosynthesis. Gisriel et al. describe the structure of a photosynthetic reaction…

Letter to the Editor: Does C4 Photosynthesis Occur in Wheat Seeds?

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By Robert J. Henry, Parimalan Rangan, Agnelo Furtado, Florian A. Busch, Graham D. Farquhar Does C4 photosynthesis occur in seeds? A nice set of of arguments for and against, as Letters to Editor. Read more ... http://www.plantphysiol.org/content/174/4/1992