Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2020 Dec;228(6):1734-1740.
doi: 10.1111/nph.16494. Epub 2020 Mar 23.

C2 photosynthesis: a promising route towards crop improvement?

Marjorie R Lundgren  1
Affiliations
Free article
Review

C2 photosynthesis: a promising route towards crop improvement?

Marjorie R Lundgren. New Phytol. 2020 Dec.
Free article

Abstract

C2 photosynthesis is a carbon concentrating mechanism that can increase net CO2 assimilation by capturing, concentrating and re-assimilating CO2 released by photorespiration. Empirical and modelling studies indicate that C2 plants assimilate more carbon than C3 plants under high temperature, bright light, and low CO2 conditions. I argue that engineering C2 photosynthesis into C3 crops is a promising approach to improve photosynthetic performance under these - and temporally heterogeneous - environments, and review the modifications that may re-create a C2 phenotype in C3 plants. Although a C2 engineering program would encounter many of the same challenges faced by C4 engineering programmes, the simpler leaf anatomical requirements make C2 engineering a feasible approach to improve crops in the medium term.

Keywords: C2 photosynthesis; C3-C4 intermediate; bundle sheath cells; carbon concentrating mechanism; crop improvement; food security; glycine shuttle; photorespiratory CO2 pump.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Adwy W, Laxa M, Peterhansel C. 2015. A simple mechanism for the establishment of C2-specific gene expression in Brassicaceae. The Plant Journal 84: 1231-1238.
    1. Adwy W, Schlüter U, Papenbrock J, Peterhansel C, Offermann S. 2019. Loss of the M-box from the glycine decarboxylase P-subunit promoter in C2 Moricandia species. Plant Gene 18: 100176.
    1. Atkinson RR, Mockford EJ, Bennett C, Christin PA, Spriggs EL, Freckleton RP, Thompson K, Rees M, Osborne CP. 2016. C4 photosynthesis boosts growth by altering physiology, allocation and size. Nature Plants 2: 16038.
    1. Bellasio C, Farquhar GD. 2019. A leaf-level biochemical model simulating the introduction of C2 and C4 photosynthesis in C3 rice: gains, losses and metabolite fluxes. New Phytologist 223: 150-166.
    1. Blätke MA, Bräutigam A. 2019. Evolution of C4 photosynthesis predicted by constraint-based modelling. eLife 8: e49305.

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources