Cornell University Scientists (USA) found a way to create highly productive agricultural plants with an improved photo sectite process. The discovery, which is reported in the high-tech scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, indicates the possibility of increasing the yield of cultures on limited areas, which will allow to feed the growing population of the Earth by 2050.
in chloroplasts contains a carboangeerase enzyme, which facilitates photosynthesis in plants, which fixes carbon through the C3 path (that is, most plants). It catalyzes the mutual adventure reaction between bicarbonate (HCO3) and carbon dioxide and water, and thus ensures the equilibrium between the digestible carbon dioxide and bicarbonate. It is believed that to increase the productivity of photosynthesis, it is necessary to remove carboangendrase, and then the agricultural plants will begin to absorb carbon dioxide supposedly as intense as blue-green algae (or cyanobacteria).
To suppress carbanese hydrazes, scientists used the CRISPR / CAS9 gene editing system. With the help of it, they blocked the activity of two genes encoding two types of carbonithihrose β-Ca1 and β-Ca5 operating inside chloroplasts. It turned out that if you block one of two enzymes, the plants are growing normally, but when you knocked both genes, the leaves began to die. Thus, carboangeerase is needed by plants in order to produce bicarbonate necessary for the formation of a sheet.
If the plants with a double mutation are placed in conditions with a high content of carbon dioxide (9000 parts per million), then normal growth resumed, since in this case there is enough bicarbonate in the tissues of the leaves and without the participation of carbachanger. The leaves of both mutants and normal plants ripening at high concentrations of CO2 had identical carbon fixation rates and the efficiency of the photo system II – the complex, which produces oxygen when the water decomposition involving light.
Since the study discloses that carbonichendraz itself is not needed for the photosynthesis process, it remains to create additional mechanisms for transporting bicarbonates to chloroplasts to increase the efficiency of carbon assay. Researchers plan to establish a bicarbonate carrier on a chloropstable membrane to import a compound from other parts of the cell in chloroplasts. For this purpose, scientists received a grant of the National Science Foundation in the amount of about 800 thousand dollars. Another important problem is that carboangeez is needed to protect plants from viruses, but this function can perform an inactive enzyme.