Bilateral NSF/BIO-BBSRC Synthesis of Microcompartments in Plants for Enhanced Carbon Fixation

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Global demand for food and fuel is steadily increasing, while gains in yield of many major food crops through traditional breeding have leveled off in recent years. The natural variation that has been the source of substantial crop improvement is becoming exhausted, so that new efforts, including input from synthetic biology will be needed to improve photosynthetic efficiency. More than 90% of biomass is derived directly from photosynthetic products. The properties of the carbon-fixing enzyme Rubisco (ribulose-1:5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase) limit the efficiency of photosynthesis in land plants. Rubisco can catalyze the combination of RuBP (ribulose-1,5-bisphophate) with CO2, but also can catalyze the reaction of RuBP with oxygen, leading to photorespiration, a process in which previously fixed CO2 is lost. Cyanobacteria and some land plants have evolved to deal with an increase of oxygen in the atmosphere by developing mechanisms that concentrate CO2 near Rubisco. However, many of the globally important crop plants lack this ability; instead, they utilise Rubisco enzymes that have higher CO2 affinity but are slower than Rubisco enzymes in plants with carbon-concentrating mechanisms such as maize. Consequently, these plants must devote considerable amounts of protein, and thereby, nitrogen, to allow Rubisco to carry out adequate amounts of carbon fixation, reducing yield and biomass production.One of the outstanding millenial goals is to find ways to improve photosynthetic yields for enhanced biomass production. Replacing endogenous Rubisco with a faster enzyme with less CO2 specificity, along with a carbon concentrating mechanism, is one way to significantly improve CO2 fixation, according to published computational models. We propose to undertake work to this end. We will install a novel cyanobacterial-based carbon-concentrating mechanism in a land plant chloroplast and provide the necessary molecular machinery to facilitate its operation. Regulatory modules will be produced to express components of the cyanobacterial carboxysome from the chloroplast genome and chloroplast membrane-targeted bicarbonate pumps from the nuclear genome. As a proof of principle, this work will be carried out in tobacco, a species in which chloroplast transformants can be most rapidly obtained. We have already established the ground work for this engineering feat, demonstrating that several of the components can be introduced; for example, to generate novel microcompartments within the tobacco chloroplast. We expect the knowledge gained from the project will inform subsequent efforts to enhance photosynthesis in other species, for example by introducing synthetic microcompartments into species such as soybean, in which technology is already available for chloroplast and nuclear transformation. Knowledge will be gained through biochemical and microscopic studies, for example about the effect of stoichiometry of cyanobacterial proteins on microcompartment size, morphology, and function in carbon concentration and photosynthesis. We will examine features of the gene regulatory sequences on the synthetic chloroplast operons needed to express proteins in the amounts and ratios needed for assembly of microcompartments. We expect the findings to be valuable also for future projects and additions of other capabilities to plants by synthesis of artificial microcompartments.