New mathematical models to increase photosynthesis efficiency
© Steffen Köhler/ HHU
Plants capture the energy of sunlight in the process called photosynthesis and use this energy to fix carbon dioxide from the air and produce oxygen. However, the key enzyme that catalyzes the fixation of carbon dioxide is not perfect and sometimes captures an oxygen molecule instead, resulting in toxic by-products, which are degraded in a process called photorespiration. Overall, photorespiration leads to a considerably lower efficiency of photosynthesis. While this process cannot be totally avoided, a possible strategy to increase the efficiency of plants is to engineer alternative pathways that might even increase the overall efficiency of photosynthesis.
In this paper, mathematical models were developed to simulate alternative pathways, which have been proposed and partially already realized in plants in the recent years. The computational results explain principal limitations of different pathway designs and clearly indicate which pathways are most promising to increase photosynthetic efficiency.