Algae's photosynthesis tricks could help crops grow faster and make more nutrients
Miguel MR, Xiang T
Crop Improvement
The green pond scum in your birdbath runs a built-in CO2 pump that leafy garden plants never evolved, and scientists are working to install it in the vegetables and trees you grow.
Algae are tiny water plants that capture light and gather carbon dioxide in ways that land plants don't. Scientists are copying these tricks into crop plants, including a different kind of light-catching pigment and a compartment that concentrates carbon dioxide around the plant's main carbon-fixing enzyme. Algae also make valuable nutrients and industrial compounds, and researchers want crops to make those too.
Key Findings
Three algal traits show promise for plant engineering: chlorophyll c-based light harvesting, pyrenoid-based carbon-concentrating mechanisms, and high-value biosynthetic pathways.
Early in planta progress includes engineering chlorophyll c biosynthesis, rebuilding components of the pyrenoid carbon-concentrating system, and transferring pathways that make nutritionally and industrially valuable metabolites.
Algal functional genomics tools are speeding discovery of new candidate genes for crop engineering, but translating algal traits into real gains in land plants remains challenging.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Algae have photosynthesis tricks that land plants lack, and researchers are now moving them into crops. Borrowing algal light-capturing pigments, carbon-concentrating structures, and valuable metabolite pathways could raise crop yields and turn plants into producers of nutrients and industrial compounds.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Harnessing algal biology for engineering photosynthesis and metabolism in plants.
Photosynthesis underpins global food production and energy conversion across the biosphere and remains a central target for improving biological and agricultural productivity. Previous methods to i...
open_in_new Read full abstractAbstract copyright held by the original publisher.
Species Mentioned
Was this useful?
Want to tell us more? (optional)
Thanks for the note!
Something went wrong — please try again.
Too many submissions. Try again in an hour.
Targeted knockout of a host peroxisomal peptidase confers field resistance to...
The corn in your grocery store and the staple food keeping millions of East African families fed is under serious threat from a viral disease that can wipe o...
Chlamydomonas is a genus of green algae consisting of about 150 species of unicellular flagellates, found in stagnant water and on damp soil, in freshwater, seawater, and even in snow as "snow algae". Chlamydomonas is used as a model organism for molecular biology, especially studies of flagellar...