Modelling effects of climate change on photosynthetic enzymes to find solutions for future food and environmental security

光合作用是地球范围内最重要的生物过程，在高温下受到二氧化碳固定酶Rubisco及其催化伴侣Rubisco激活酶的限制。Rubisco是地球上含量最丰富的酶，其全球质量估计在0.04到0.4GT之间，上限接近当前全球人类的质量。和人类一样，Rubisco在改变生态系统方面的能力也超出了它的能力。Sage等人。(J Exp Bot 2008)表明Rubisco和Rubisco激活酶可能是控制高热敏性的唯一主要因素，因此黑云杉未来的成功，是北美北部针叶林的主要初级生产者和主要碳汇。尽管Rubisco是二氧化碳固定和物种未来成功的关键参与者，但在不同气候变化情景下，它的表现将如何影响生态系统的未来的建模工作很少。我们发表了一系列温度下的Rubisco动力学(Orr等人)。&Hermida等人。植物物理2016)，并模拟了哪些RuBiscos在[CO2]和温度上升的情况下表现更好(Sharwood等人)。拟议的项目将结合生物和环境信息学领域，使用我们关于酶特性的数据，以及来自公开可用的数据库的蛋白质序列和结构、物种分布和气候的数据。主要目的是在分子、物种、生态系统和行星水平上模拟气候变化对Rubisco和Rubisco激活酶性能的影响。这个博士项目将与最近资助的一个关于Rubisco合成生物学的项目协同作用，并为具有生态和农业重要性的关键物种的人类辅助耐热性进化提供信息，这可能会减轻气候变化的负面影响，同时满足世界人口增长的营养和能源需求--这是联合国关键的可持续发展目标。“

"Photosynthesis, the most important biological process on a planetary scale, is limited under high temperature by the CO2 fixing enzyme, Rubisco, and its catalytic chaperone, Rubisco activase. Rubisco is the most abundant enzyme on a planet with estimates of its global mass ranging from 0.04 to 0.4 Gt, where the upper limit approaching current global mass of humans. And like humans, Rubisco punches above its weight in its ability to change ecosystems. Sage et al. (J Exp Bot 2008) showed that Rubisco and Rubisco activase could be the single principal control over a high thermal sensitivity and hence the future success of black spruce, the predominant primary producer and a major carbon sink in the boreal forests of North America. Despite Rubisco being the key player in both CO2 fixation and the future success of species, very little work has been done to model how its performance will affect future of ecosystems under different climate change scenarios. We published Rubisco kinetics under a range of temperatures (Orr et al. & Hermida et al. Plant Phys 2016) and modelled which Rubiscos will perform better under rising [CO2] & temperature (Sharwood et al. Nature Plants 2016).The proposed project will combine fields of bio- and environmental informatics using our data on enzyme properties combined with data on protein sequences and structure, species distribution and climate from publicly available databases. The major objective is to model effects of climate change on Rubisco and Rubisco activase performance on the molecular, species, ecosystem, and planetary levels. This PhD project will be synergistic to recently funded one on synthetic biology of Rubisco and inform human-assisted evolution of heat tolerance in key species of ecological and agricultural importance, which could mitigate negative effects of climate change, while meeting nutritional and energy demands of a growing world population - key UN sustainable development goals. "