Lots of people are excited about the idea of using plants to help us draw down some of the excess carbon dioxide we’ve been pumping into the atmosphere. It would be nice to think that we could reforest our way out of the mess we’re creating, but recent studies have indicated there’s simply not enough productive land for this to work out.
One alternative might be to get plants to take up carbon dioxide more efficiently. Unfortunately, the enzyme that incorporates carbon dioxide into photosynthesis, called RUBISCO, is remarkably inefficient. So, a team of researchers in Taiwan decided to try something new—literally. They put together a set of enzymes that added a new-to-nature biochemical cycle to plants that let it incorporate carbon far more efficiently. The resulting plants grew larger and incorporated more carbon.
Cycles and recycles
In the abstract, incorporating carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into the biochemistry of the cell seems simple—you just link up a few of the carbon atoms and you’re off. But in reality, it’s fiendishly complicated. Carbon dioxide is an extremely stable molecule, so incorporating it requires a very energetically favorable reaction. In the Calvin cycle of photosynthesis, that reaction involves linking the carbon dioxide as part of a reaction that breaks apart a modified five-carbon sugar, creating two three-carbon molecules. Some of those molecules get fed into the cell’s metabolism, while others get built up into a five-carbon sugar again, restarting the cycle.
Read full article
Comments
