If we are serious about feeding the world's growing population, and to grant food security for the next generations, we must think about boosting food production without ruining our planet.
One of the avenues being recently explored is the improvement of photosynthetic capacity by installing the C4 photosynthetic pathway into C3 crops.
By increasing the photosynthetic capacity, crops with an enhanced photosynthetic mechanism would better utilize the solar radiation that can be translated into yield.
I want to know how can we insert a C4 photosynthetic pathway into C3 ? And what are the disadvantages of this technique !?
Amine Elbouzidi
Engineering C4 photosynthesis into C3 chassis in the synthetic biology age
Article Engineering C4 photosynthesis into C3 chassis in the synthet...
It's not possible at this time. See: Article Engineering C4 photosynthesis into C3 chassis in the synthet...
Andrew Paul McKenzie Pegman
Agree with your point.
Still, incorporation of C4 photosynthesis into C3 crop plants is not possible with present resources.
It is possible by egineering the photorespiration because a major difference between C3 and C4 is photorespiration that cost alot of energy. It has been demonstrated in genetically engineered rice by incorporating a GOC bypass. You can serach the paper by keyword GOC bypaas and its an interesting research.
Dear Amine Elbouzidi I appreciate your interest in C3-C4 photosynthetic pathway. It is possible for me to recollect that it happened to be a very fascinating topic (besides biological nitrogen fixation in non-legumes) during my postgraduate days some three decades ago. Today, it is still a hot topic, and in fact researchers have been continuing their efforts too, which is evident from aforementioned references. One more paper has appeared in PloS One:
Article Computational modelling predicts substantial carbon assimila...
But, I have another point. C3 plants abounds in nature, why? Simply because these plants are more competitive than C4 in mixture. Whether competitive ability has any connection with abiotic stress tolerance in isolation and in mixture! There are many such a question. I think many a time we spend our useful time in interpreting consequences instead of causes.
Thank you!
Dear Professor Choudhary,
Thanks a lot for your answer, the paper that you have mentioned sounds very interesting, I believe that in the future we will be able to switch from the C3 photosynthetic mechanism to C4, simply because of C4 characteristics present in C3 plants.
I think that changing the C3 plants to C4 will require large genetic and physiological resources to make the most of the unit of land and water in the long term, but it is possible in the short term to do some easy and simple methods for this purpose, which is to growing C3 plants with C4 in the same land
C3, C4 and CAM are the three different processes that plants use to fix carbon during the process of photosynthesis. Fixing carbon is the way plants remove the carbon from atmospheric carbon dioxide and turn it into organic molecules like carbohydrates. C4 and CAM strategies both reduce photorespiration that occurs in a higher amount in C3 photosynthesis. C3 plants do not have special features to combat photorespiration, while C4 plants minimize photorespiration by performing carbon dioxide fixation and Calvin cycle in separate cells. CAM plants, on the other hand, minimize photorespiration by performing carbon dioxide fixation and Calvin cycle at separate times.
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