Functional Hybrid Rubisco Enzymes with Plant Small Subunits and Algal Large Subunits

There has been much interest in the chloroplast-encoded largesubunitofribulose-1,5-bisphosphatecarboxylase/oxygenase (Rubisco) as a target for engineering an increase in net CO2 fixation in photosynthesis. Improvements in the enzyme would lead to an increase in the production of food, fiber, and renewable energy. Although the large subunit contains the active site, a family of rbcS nuclear genes encodes the Rubisco small subunits, which can also influence the carboxylation catalytic efficiency and CO2/O2 specificity of the enzyme. To further define theroleofthesmallsubunitinRubiscofunction,smallsubunits from spinach, Arabidopsis, and sunflower were assembled with algal large subunits by transformation of a Chlamydomonas reinhardtii mutant that lacks the rbcS gene family. Foreign rbcS cDNAs were successfully expressed in Chlamydomonas by fusing them to a Chlamydomonas rbcS transit peptide sequence engineered to contain rbcS introns. Although plant Rubisco generally has greater CO2/O2 specificity but a lower carboxylation Vmax than Chlamydomonas Rubisco, the hybrid enzymes have3‐11%increasesinCO2/O2specificityandretainnearnormal Vmax values. Thus, small subunits may make a significant contribution to the overall catalytic performance of Rubisco. Despite having normal amounts of catalytically proficient Rubisco, the hybrid mutant strains display reduced levels of photosynthetic growth and lack chloroplast pyrenoids. It appears that small subunits contain the structural elements responsiblefortargetingRubiscotothealgalpyrenoid,whichis the site where CO2 is concentrated for optimal photosynthesis.