Abstract
The assimilation of CO2 within chloroplasts is catalyzed by the bi-functional enzyme ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase, Rubisco. Within higher plants the Rubisco large subunit gene, rbcL, is encoded in the plastid genome, while the Rubisco small subunit gene, RbcS is coded in the nucleus by a multi-gene family. Rubisco is considered a poor catalyst due to its slow turnover rate and its additional fixation of O2 that can result in wasteful loss of carbon through the energy requiring photorespiratory cycle. Improving the carboxylation efficiency and CO2/O2 selectivity of Rubisco within higher plants has been a long-term goal which has been greatly advanced in recent times using plastid transformation techniques. Here we present experimental methodologies for efficiently engineering Rubisco in the plastids of a tobacco master-line and analyzing leaf Rubisco content.
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References
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the Australian Research Council grants DP0984790 and FT0991407.
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Whitney, S.M., Sharwood, R.E. (2014). Plastid Transformation for Rubisco Engineering and Protocols for Assessing Expression. In: Maliga, P. (eds) Chloroplast Biotechnology. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1132. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-62703-995-6_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-62703-995-6_15
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