title: Cyanobacterial CO2-concentrating mechanism components: function and prospects for plant metabolic engineering.
abstract: Global population growth is projected to outpace plant-breeding improvements in major crop yields within decades. To ensure future food security, multiple creative efforts seek to overcome limitations to crop yield. Perhaps the greatest limitation to increased crop yield is photosynthetic inefficiency, particularly in C3 crop plants. Recently, great strides have been made toward crop improvement by researchers seeking to introduce the cyanobacterial CO2-concentrating mechanism (CCM) into plant chloroplasts. This strategy recognises the C3 chloroplast as lacking a CCM, and being a primordial cyanobacterium at its essence. Hence the collection of solute transporters, enzymes, and physical structures that make cyanobacterial CO2-fixation so efficient are viewed as a natural source of genetic material for C3 chloroplast improvement. Also we highlight recent outstanding research aimed toward the goal of introducing a cyanobacterial CCM into C3 chloroplasts and consider future research directions.
authors.affiliation: ARC Centre of Excellence for Translational Photosynthesis, Division of Plant Sciences, Research School of Biology, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia. Electronic address: ben.long@anu.edu.au.
authors.forename: Benedict M
authors.initials: BM
authors.lastname: Long
authors.affiliation: ARC Centre of Excellence for Translational Photosynthesis, Division of Plant Sciences, Research School of Biology, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia.
authors.forename: Benjamin D
authors.initials: BD
authors.lastname: Rae
authors.affiliation: ARC Centre of Excellence for Translational Photosynthesis, Division of Plant Sciences, Research School of Biology, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia.
authors.forename: Vivien
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Rolland
authors.affiliation: ARC Centre of Excellence for Translational Photosynthesis, Division of Plant Sciences, Research School of Biology, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia.
authors.forename: Britta
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Förster
authors.affiliation: ARC Centre of Excellence for Translational Photosynthesis, Division of Plant Sciences, Research School of Biology, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia.
authors.forename: G Dean
authors.initials: GD
authors.lastname: Price
mesh_terms: D002245:Carbon Dioxide / Q000378:metabolism*; D002736:Chloroplasts / Q000378:metabolism; D000458:Cyanobacteria / Q000378:metabolism*; D060847:Metabolic Engineering / Q000379:methods
chemical_list: D002245:Carbon Dioxide