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

光合作用是地球上最重要的生物过程，在高温下受到CO2固定酶Rubisco及其催化伴侣Rubisco活化酶的限制。Rubisco是地球上最丰富的酶，估计其全球质量范围为0.04至0.4 Gt，其中上限接近目前全球人类的质量。和人类一样，Rubisco在改变生态系统的能力上超出了它的体重。Sage等人（J Exp Bot 2008）表明，Rubisco和Rubisco活化酶可能是对高热敏感性的单一主要控制，因此是黑云杉未来的成功，黑云杉是北美北方森林中主要的初级生产者和主要碳汇。尽管Rubisco是CO2固定和物种未来成功的关键角色，但在不同气候变化情景下，其性能如何影响生态系统未来的模型研究很少。我们发表了在一定温度范围内的Rubisco动力学（Orr et al. & Hermida et al. Plant Phys 2016），并对Rubiscos在[CO2]和温度升高的情况下表现更好进行了建模（Sharwood et al. Nature Plants 2016）。拟议的项目将利用我们的酶特性数据结合蛋白质序列和结构数据，将生物和环境信息学领域的联合收割机结合起来，物种分布和气候从公开可用的数据库。主要目标是在分子、物种、生态系统和行星水平上模拟气候变化对Rubisco和Rubisco活化酶性能的影响。这个博士项目将与最近资助的Rubisco合成生物学项目协同，并为生态和农业重要性的关键物种的耐热性的人类辅助进化提供信息，这可以减轻气候变化的负面影响，同时满足不断增长的世界人口的营养和能源需求-联合国可持续发展的关键目标。"

"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. "