Abstract
The enzyme ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase-oxygenase (RuBPCase) has a pivotal role in photosynthetic organisms, catalysing the first reactions of the interlocked but opposing pathways of photosynthesis and photorespiration1,2. The agricultural interest in RuBPCase centres on the possibility of altering the structure of the enzyme to improve net photosynthetic yield, but such studies are hampered by the structural complexity of the hexadecameric holoenzyme in plants which prevents in vitro dissociation and reconstitution, apparently due to the properties of the large subunits3,4. We have chosen to express the large and small subunit genes of the cyanobacterium Synechococcus PCC6301 in Escherichia coli to develop an experimental system in which structural changes introduced into RuBPCase polypeptides could be assessed following subunit assembly. The cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) are autotrophic prokaryotes which have a plant-like photosynthetic mechanism and RuBPCase structure5,6. We report here the synthesis of an active RuBPCase in E. coli which contains both large and small subunit polypeptides.
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Gatenby, A., van der Vies, S. & Bradley, D. Assembly in E. coli of a functional multi-subunit ribulose bisphosphate carboxylase from a blue-green alga. Nature 314, 617–620 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1038/314617a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/314617a0
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