@article{4444,
  keywords = {Carbon Dioxide, Photosynthesis, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, Chloroplasts, Ribulose-Bisphosphate Carboxylase, Plastids, Crops, Agricultural},
  author = {Chenyi Fei and Alexandra Wilson and Niall Mangan and Ned Wingreen and Martin Jonikas},
  title = {Modelling the pyrenoid-based CO-concentrating mechanism provides insights into its operating principles and a roadmap for its engineering into crops.},
  abstract = { <p>Many eukaryotic photosynthetic organisms enhance their carbon uptake by supplying concentrated CO to the CO-fixing enzyme Rubisco in an organelle called the pyrenoid. Ongoing efforts seek to engineer this pyrenoid-based CO-concentrating mechanism (PCCM) into crops to increase yields. Here we develop a computational model for a PCCM on the basis of the postulated mechanism in the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. Our model recapitulates all Chlamydomonas PCCM-deficient mutant phenotypes and yields general biophysical principles underlying the PCCM. We show that an effective and energetically efficient PCCM requires a physical barrier to reduce pyrenoid CO leakage, as well as proper enzyme localization to reduce futile cycling between CO and HCO. Importantly, our model demonstrates the feasibility of a purely passive CO uptake strategy at air-level CO, while active HCO uptake proves advantageous at lower CO levels. We propose a four-step engineering path to increase the rate of CO fixation in the plant chloroplast up to threefold at a theoretical cost of only 1.3 ATP per CO fixed, thereby offering a framework to guide the engineering of a PCCM into land plants.</p> },
  year = {2022},
  journal = {Nat Plants},
  volume = {8},
  pages = {583-595},
  month = {2022 May},
  issn = {2055-0278},
  doi = {10.1038/s41477-022-01153-7},
  language = {eng},
}