Photosynthesis has a problem

The enzyme RuBisCO is essential for photosynthesis. But it kind of sucks at is job, and it’s getting worse with extreme heat.
Proof of Concept is a video series profiling the science and scientists behind some of the environment’s most unexpected research. To see a written version of this story, visit our website:
grist.org/video/plant-enzyme-...
Video by Jesse Nichols
Senior Producer: Daniel Penner
Deputy Editor: Teresa Chin
Executive Editor: Kat Bagley
Illustrator: Estelle Caswell
Sources:
Robbie Wilson
Ahmed Badran
Mary Gehring
David Eisenberg
Berkley Walker
MIT J-WAFS EPiC Program
jwafs.mit.edu/projects/2023/e...
Erb et al. 2017
“A short history of RubisCO: The rise and fall (?) of Nature’s predominant CO2 fixing enzyme”
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
Bouvier et al. 2024
“Rubisco is evolving for improved catalytic efficiency and CO2 assimilation in plants”
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas...
Wildman 2002
“Along the trail from Fraction I protein to Rubisco”
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16245...
Chibnall 1939
“Protein Metabolism in the Plant”
Prywes et al. 2023
“Rubisco Function, Evolution, and Engineering”
www.annualreviews.org/content...
Aigner et al. 2017
“Plant RuBisCo assembly in E. coli with five chloroplast chaperones including BSD2”
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29217...
C4 Rice Project
c4rice.com/the-science/photos...

[@avocados1707]

"im not going to be kink shamed on rubisco, all right?" LMFAOOO

[@rhnirsilva652]

our fate is in the right hands

[@zodiacfml]

crucial in tropical, hot climates. consider that leaves are mostly green because it wants to reject/reflect the most energetic part of the sunlight's spectrum.

[@NullHand]

If that were true, then hard shade understory plants would be purple. Modern plants are green because chlorophyll was not the first photosynthetic kid on the block. The water splitting cyanobacteria were late to the sunlight game, and all the good frequencies (green) were already monopolized by bacteriorhodopsin armed archaea and bacteria.

[@wolvenedge6214]

@@NullHand Can we make plants that use that instead?

[@NullHand]

@@wolvenedge6214 Possibly in some far distant future of biotech. The Archaea and some bacteria that use this form of phototrophy don't use it to fix CO2 and create reducing power. They use it to create a proton gradient across a membrane and run ATP Synthase directly. Kinda like a solar powered mitochondrion. When they evolved this there was no free oxygen on Earth, so reducing power wasn't needed.

[@Luke-lb2cv]

@@NullHand Yes but the bacteria do this because they just use the ATP directly. Plants need to undergo the calvin cycle in order to turn the ATP and NADPH produced in the light-independent reactions into Glucose, which can be stored for longer than ATP and easily transported through the Phloem from sugar sources to sinks.

[@spiderspyy]

​@@NullHand You seem to know a lot about it, would be cool if you made videos about the topic!

[@Deletedcommentfactory]

It’s the name. Rubisco sounds like dollar store cookies.

[@degariuslozak2169]

Sounds like a knock off coffee brand

[@owlofthenights3680]

Or a failed kickstarter of a better rubix cube

[@potatocatstar]

Rubisco vs Nabisco Creme betweens vs oreos

[@jskksjjskksj]

There's a brand of biscuits called Rebisco

[@Deletedcommentfactory]

@@jskksjjskksj I guess I must have seen it and filed it in my subconscious.

[@christopherzhu3220]

This project would potentially be catastrophic for the natural world where the RuBisCO enzyme is fundamentally less efficient. Modified plants with better photosynthesizing capabilities would easily outcompete the native plants. We already know what havoc an invasive species can do to an ecosystem, let alone a super plant/gene would have on the world. This can only be done in very controlled environments such as lab grown food or well controlled industrial applications.

[@saffron584]

Unfortunately true, these super plants would be great for use in space

[@Nanamowa]

Plants also require a certain amount of water, nitrogen, phosphorus and other minerals to survive and are limited by those. Most invasive species simply produce a lot of viable seeds and many fix their own nitrogen, but our crops have very low germination rates, require special attention to reach seedling stages typically and require an unnatural amount of fertilizers. When you consider that nitrogen is typically the limiting factor to a plants growth, I see this having little to no ability to produce invasive plants species. In fact, even if we produced highly efficient RuBisCO enzymes and engineered plants to perfectly fix nitrogen, I doubt those plants would take over because being plentiful and edible makes you predated on more, especially when your seeds have had human aid for their sowing for thousands of years.

[@bmanpura]

Not to mention that these enzymes might work in some other ways we don't understand. No modification unless it's really safe.

[@dankline9162]

Right? Theyd turn into kudzus

[@Nanamowa]

@@bmanpura Kinda a dumb argument given that any modification to any protein is possible given the variation in mutations that occur with every successive generation. You may as well be against selective breeding for the exact reason, except you have even less of a clue of what the outcomes will be in that case because it's random instead of artificial.

[@sanjayatimilsina5799]

All the plants in the world have very inefficient Rubisco. Could there be a reason that this evolutionarily benefits them?

[@Rice_enjoyer999]

it's most likely that making more Rubisco is good enough for photosynthetic organisms

[@taylorhillard4868]

1) rubisco is good enough for survival 2) any change to rubisco's amino acid pattern (a mutation) is more likely to result in an enzyme that doesn't function at all, rather than one that functions better.

[@efrenchen293]

I recommend checking out Arnold Bloom’s research on this. In short, he makes the case that photorespiration is advantageous for nitrogen absorption. It’s a tad controversial but definitely an interesting idea.

[@bogdy72000]

not efficient enough for our greed ? ... but as efficient as they need

[@mlbaldwin1978]

perfection isnt the purpose of evolution, its just survival. there are a lot of quite messy ways to survive and thrive in this world.

[@baraskparas9559]

The biggest dilemma is that CO2 at 0.04% in the atmosphere is way lower than the 70% when photosynthesis first started billions of years ago. Nature has increased the synthesis of RuBisCo and evolved various carbon concentrating methods to balance this out and still make lots of product from minimal reactants. It may be a better conservation strategy to limit methane in the atmosphere and actively extract water vapour by using wind power.

[@JKenny44]

Right, Strictly concerning plants and photosynthesis increased Co2 levels are purely a benefit. Idk why people feel the need to lie about this. We just can't have nuance I suppose. Co2 bad!!

[@baseddruid8773]

Methane is the biggest danger not CO2 but that can't be used by governments to justify more control so it isn't mentioned.

[@lewis7242]

You mean when 99% of our current plant species didn’t exist and the world was dominated by cyanobacteria that live in the ocean not in the ambient climate…. Right, maybe rethink this one.

[@hurrdurrmurrgurr]

@@JKenny44 Heat stress is not a benefit, you and the other misinformation guru are describing life in the boring billion, which was incompatible with human life.

[@baseddruid8773]

@@lewis7242 Well the plants have done pretty well these past 2-3 billion years being on the land so I think we will be okay. Plus we have things like the svalbard seed vault to preserve species if need be.

[@WonderfulDeath]

these videos are too good for how low the views are

[@StefanReich]

Yeah this was basically Veritasium level

[@fritagonia]

I was just about to say that. The quality is crazy good!

[@thelukesternater]

Bump

[@thelukesternater]

@@StefanReich rude…

[@DSAK55]

that's not a bug. Shit content attracts more views because there are more stupid people

[@ProteinFromTheSea]

This feels like the biology equivalent of room temperature superconductors: Would be awesome if someone figured it out, and we're getting closer, but it's taken decades and at this point your peers will look at you funny for working on it.

[@robertunderwood1011]

It is a big step into the direction of cheap human nutrition The scientist to work on this are heroes

[@lemonke8132]

meh not really at all. Room temperature superconductor would require finding an entirely undiscovered physics phenomenon. Whereas using bacteria to randomly mutate rubisco until a better one is inevitably found is just how all incremental improvement has ever worked.

[@ProteinFromTheSea]

@@lemonke8132 From a purely scientific perspective, you're right. I'm referring more to the culture in academia surrounding those who work on the two issues.

[@WaterspoutsOfTheDeep]

@@robertunderwood1011 Is it though? In reality we could just crisper the plant to have more chloroplasts for more energy production.

[@AricGardnerMontreal]

For C3 plants (like wheat and rice): the optimal temperature range for photosynthesis is between 20-30°C (68-86°F). For C4 plants (like maize and sugarcane), it is between 30-40°C (86-104°F) also stomatal closure happens at these higher temperatures, to keep in moisture. I was alway taught that plants don't really grow on very hot and sunny days, in any case these two effects happen at around the same temperatures and have. compounding effect. the world has been hot before, and this magical protein they are searching for never materialized despite countless mutations and literal eons of evolutionary pressure. so my bet Is that this is a fundamental limitation and will never be solved.

[@Zackzickel]

Actually there evolved at least two better photosynthesises in plants: C4 and CAM. Even though the last few million years saw record low carbon dioxide levels, these mechanisms are still only found in a limited number of species specialised for hot dry climates. On the other hand, it wasn’t really hot during that time.

[@omegahaxors3306]

Fun fact: if photosynthesis was just a few % more efficient, it would become possible for humans to survive solely off of it. In fact, it's already theoretically possible using rates accessible by algae, if ideal conditions are provided. Energy is ultimately a numbers game, and as it turns out sunlight has a LOT of energy in it, even when most of it is wasted. EDIT: Another fun fact is that we already have the capability of converting sunlight into something useful with melanin standing in for chlorophyll, and it's actually more effective at its job than chlorophyll due to capturing all of the colors instead of rejecting green, the only problem is that it's only capable of making Vitamin D instead of making the sugars and oxygen needed to sustain animal life.

[@NullHand]

Ummm. Melanin is not involved in a constructive way in the creation of Vitamin D. That happens non-enzymaticaly by UV directly striking and breaking one of the rings in 7-dehydrocholesterol. Melanin in humans is basically sunblock, simply absorbing UV and converting it to heat before it can mutate DNA by dimerization. Levels of skin pigmentation basically try to tune the balance between letting enough UV in to avoid ricketts while not killing the largest organ of your body with radiation damage from the excess. Tropical UV levels demand more screening than temperate. Summer demands more than winter.

[@vakusdrake3224]

Gonna need a source. Given that all the calculations of how much an energy a mammal would get from photosynthsis that I've ever seen aren't even close to filling caloric needs. There's a *huge* difference between trying to sustain a cold blooded vs a warm blooded animal with photosynthesis.

[@noergelstein]

You need like a thousand square meters of land to produce enough food to sustain a human with a vegan diet and under ideal growing conditions. Yet it is supposed to be possible with like 2 square meters of skin of which at most half can face the sun at a time?

[@ChupacabraRex]

@@noergelstein tbf part of that is because we are intensly wastefull eaters who only eat the seeds on a plant, but even if we were capable of eating bamboo I don't think a single person has the surface area to use the energy available from sunlight.

[@omegahaxors3306]

@@noergelstein That thousand square meters of land isn't supporting one person, it's usually supporting a city or town of people. It also goes into inefficient practices such as growing animals, as well as producing bio-fuel so not all of it is feeding people. Run the numbers yourself if you don't believe me, you'll find that just a few % in efficiency makes all the difference in the world. I did the math because I was making a mod for a game with really annoying hunger mechanics and ended up having to nerf it twice because it was too strong.

[@Johnny-re7dm]

one of the most impressively edited news outlets, yet so underrated and overlooked by the yt algorithm. such a damn shame less than one million people are seeing this

[@jtmediaholdings7877]

Both dry ethanol and dry acetone should work for "the special chemical" in the rbscCO precipitation mentioned. Usually 2:1, dessicative precipitation. 🥰

[@fenrirgg]

Alsl at some point, when the ideal conditions are met, the photosynthesis is delayed by the lack of CO2 in the air, that's why some greenhouses burn gas to make more CO2.

[@pirobot668beta]

It's worse than lack of CO2...every 88 years or so, our Sun gets a bit 'special' Gliesberg cycle it's called...a periodic shift in the solar spectrum. For about 5-8 years, plants on Earth will tend to 'bolt'...the same thing happens when you plant seeds late in the season. Plants 'know' the seasons by the color of Sunlight...bluer during Summer, redder during Fall and Winter. During a cycle, the Sun stays in 'Fall red' for the entire year. Last time we saw a cycle was 1938...things were getting interesting all over. Count backwards by 88 from there...1850, 1762, 1674, 1586. It's not an exact match, but damn...world events and Gleisberg line up pretty darn well. "Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times" Four human generations...88 years...the cycle has come by so often, it shows up in literature.

[@coreytran7415]

Note how carbon foot print policies is about reducing carbon dioxide. What do plants need to survive and grow?

[@DonCDXX]

Greenhouses add more co2 for the plants when they can make sure the inside is cool enough for the plants to metabolize it. In general, plants metabolize co2 slower when they are over their preferred temperature range. An air conditioned greenhouse can handle more co2, those in the gradually heating up wild cannot.

[@DonCDXX]

@@coreytran7415 Electrolytes?

[@iotaje1]

​@@coreytran7415Well yeah right now there's too much of it and the excess heat and unpredictable climate are hindering plant growth. What was your point again?

[@FleaOnPeanut]

Maybe it's as efficient as it needs to be to maintain equilibrium with atmospheric O2/CO2? Also, your graphic had mushrooms growing from the RuBisCo molecule. Fungi aren't plants and are an entirely different kingdom that does not produce RuBisCo.

[@cris-kp2ge]

Any co2 that a plant takes in will inevitably be returned to the air so that argument doesn't go, also there's way too much co2 in the air rn anyway.

[@michaelbuckers]

@@cris-kp2ge As far as plants are concerned, CO2 content needs to increase 100x because right now they're basically suffocating, and the entire reason they're still alive is because they can live at extremely low metabolic rates and their body is 90% lungs.

[@PolygonSwan]

@@cris-kp2ge 422.17 parts per million tip: if you slow down your movement and metabolism you will emit less co2

[@kevinmathewson4272]

@@michaelbuckers Plants are not suffocating, RuBisCO is suffocating. Plants are more complex than RuBisCO. When you increase atmospheric CO2, RuBisCO is happy, but plants begin to suffer from heat stress and increasing damage from parasites and pathogens. Worsening floods and droughts do not help the situation either. Earth's current plant species have evolved to thrive in Earth's current conditions, minus the effect of humans. Drastically altering those conditions will not give you a good result.

[@Clockworkbio]

RuBiSCO also evolved for cyanobacteria originally--critters that have these specific structures called carboxysomes that concentrate CO2 enough to help the enzyme work better. Genuinely wild seeing other folks out here talking about RuBisCO.

[@blast_processing6577]

It's important to remember that alongside the issues described in this video, different types of plants use different pathways for photosynthesis: C3, C4, and CAM. These pathways are suitable for different environments, situations, and nutrient profilrs. eg: CAM is optimized for hotter environments, there's evidence that C3 plants require excessive amounts of soil potassium to function properly when there's 575 PPM or greater atmospheric CO2, etc. etc. etc.

[@sybillestahl8646]

So if RuBisCo is a protein and plants overproduce it because of its inefficiency, plants contain more protein than they would if RuBisCo was efficient. Isn’t that a good thing for human nutrition?

[@Delmworks]

Probably more important for animal nutrition- we can make up the difference with meat, cows can’t. You are right in that the lower protein feed will be a likely issue

[@ommsterlitz1805]

Humans don't need plant protein they need animals protein and vitamins with plants vitamins to be healthy

[@honkhonk8009]

thats not the same protein as meat

[@TheRimmot]

@@honkhonk8009 Yes it is

[@enocjaredchabanvarela6218]

Manny plants; like corn, rice, wheat and others, have already solved a great part of photorespiration (the enzyme’s mistake with O2) vía the C4 photosynthesis, there’s no need for this research, but for better regulation of industry emissions.

[@eris9062]

It's unknown if it's even possible for C3 plants to utilise the C4 pathway, so it's very important to invest in alternative pathways just in case there's a physiological constraint preventing the C4 pathway, and there's also the potential that they can be utilised together as the C4 pathway doesn't modify the Rubisco/RuBisCO itself, so if this research leads to better variants of Rubisco theoretically you can have the best of both worlds. And while yes we do need better regulations given that the majority of GHG emissions are by a handful of companies, more efficient Rubisco also allows for increased crop yields due to reduced energy wastage, so it's something to be pursed irrespective of climate concerns anyway.

[@j.f.fisher5318]

6:30 Literally me at work when it gets extra busy and the barely manageable level of everyday stress exceeds the tipping point...

[@petersmythe6462]

I think part of the reason that rubisco does what it does and how it does it, is that it evolved at a time and place where O2 was less common and CO2 was more common. Modern land plants operate at very low levels of CO2 and at least above average levels of oxygen compared to their ancestors.

[@gregvanpaassen]

Make super-weeds? What could possibly go wrong?

[@omegahaxors3306]

Everyone gets super-high.

[@WingDiamond]

​@@omegahaxors3306Faaaaaar Out, Man! 🥴😅

[@Chesonate]

Fellow scientist here: This video, is soooo well made! The explanations and animations are just 10/10 great job!!

[@Chesonate]

I want this to be my job instead ;__;

[@joshuamarchal7667]

I absolutely loved the science behind this and how it's explained to the viewers, but I think this topic deserves more depth and philosophic questions: how is it intended to be applied to crops? will it be another way for big companies such as Monsanto to get a monopol on agricultural resources around the world? is there an ecological risk despite absorbing more carbon from the atmosphere? Should we play with nature at this scale is another one but most importantly we should never reply "yes" without ever asking ourselves whys and hows

[@smiththewright]

I really appreciate your videos. They are great!

[@user-bp8yg3ko1r]

Incredible video and very interesting, thank you!

[@kekero540]

This is honestly the best chance we have at becoming a type 1 civilization. I think the complex mechanisms of living things along with their ease of use make it perfect for gathering energy more cost effectively than Solar

[@jaredrusk1053]

The art and animation in this is amazing! What an interesting proof of concept and a cool idea for a series!

[@mjw7994]

I feel like RuBisCO is like that coconut.jpg in the Team Fortress 2 game files. It got put in the code at the very beginning and somehow became a vital part of it, so now you just can't mess around with it or else everything breaks. Evolution has been forced to keep RuBisCO there in its current state even though it's inefficient and makes no sense. That means slight changes to the protein probably make it even worse at it's job. Its stuck in a potential well it can't escape without a big push, but natural evolution doesn't work that way. You'd probably have to do a major redesign all at once to improve it, not just slight incremental changes. But if humans CAN intentionally redesign it to be more efficient outside of the evolutionary pressures on plant survival and then stick it back into plants, it could radically change life on this planet.

[@forabug594]

Greta video and topic! Kind of surprised that there is no mention of the evolution of RubisCO prior to land plans and the trade offs of photoinhibition. Phytoplankton and photosynthetic bacteria/archaea have been dealing with the toxicity of too much photosynthesis occurring for a larger period of evolutionary history. And it’s also a problem with other light capturing- carbon fixing systems. Also, there’s no point about the misconception that evolution is an optimization process. It’s not but that doesn’t mean that evolution results in tons of creative solutions. Lastly, I’ll say that I think that this research IS really neat and has the best application for solar cells that use synthetic photosynthesis to more efficiently and cheaply harness light, but I think it’s not as useful to try and make crops or other land plants of interest “more photosynthetically efficient” (because you also have to rework all the other biochemical pathways in the plants to deal with these major changes, oh and you don’t want any lab strains to be released into nature either).

[@philipmolina1114]

Found a new favorite science channel

[@adude7944]

3:17 nice try, guy. In the cretaceous average temperature and air oxygen content were both higher and plants are still here. They are gonna keep photosynthesizing as they did before

[@JKenny44]

Don't you know that plantlife only thrive in the coldest regions on Earth?

[@iliketurtles5180]

Well if all plants are inefficient then none of them are

[@TurokTucker]

Every time we try to outdo Nature, we end up knocking the finely tuned edge of balance that was shaped after a Billion years of life on Earth. I'm not so sure redesigning photosynthesis through a GMO could end well.

[@edwardwray9056]

Awesome, I love this kind of research.

[@toastinopler2969]

You forgot to mention C4 plants which are adapted for the very job of fixing carbon better at higher temperature and lower water use.

[@MonkeyLink07]

This guy is going to be the next Veritasum. Informative, well thought out and spoken, and a thoroughly entertaining pace and tone.

[@josepheridu3322]

Maybe the inefficiency of this protein works as a way for more biomass to be produced and consumed by animals? I doubt such inefficiency would be a net negative without being a positive elsewhere.

[@godlymajins]

Good take

[@AtilaElari]

Unfortunately for the evolution "good enough" is often where the progress stops. There are plenty examples of simply bad evolutionary traits with no redeeming qualities. They are not evolved out of because better alternatives would at the start be worse before they surpass the existing option and thus loose evolutionary competition early on. It is a problem of local optimum also common in evolutionary machine learning: system reaches the closest high point of the function and stays there, even though there is a way better peak a few steps away - but to reach it the function has to go down first, and it is designed to always go up.

[@tempname8263]

This inefficiency exists, because this protein is hard to mutate.

[@josepheridu3322]

@@AtilaElari I can understand that, but countless of mutations and life competing would at least fix the issue for a few plants by now, at least those plants living with limited access to energy, such as those near the poles. So far that is not the case... I wonder why. But yes, it may just be bad luck, just as plants found out sexual reproduction way later than other organisms.

[@msheart2]

Just ignore the blocking of the sun.

[@fundiambb]

turn the gain of your bass in the audio you dont need that to be more noticable

[@daveharrison84]

Once this gets out into nature it will completely change the equilibrium between plant matter and everything else.

[@colorado841]

I am not sure the genes would spread that way. It might still be difficult for one species with the advantage, to take over a different evolutionary slot without millions of years of time or something.

[@paulfoss5385]

​@@colorado841 True, but if the situation gets dire enough we might have to consider spreading it to wild flora intentionally. A global bioengineering project should be a last resort, we don't know what the consequences would be, we should be focused on curbing emissions and holding corporations accountable, but it won't hurt to have a hail Mary in our back pocket.

[@reidmock2165]

@@colorado841however, if it gets into cyanobacteria populations, you might start to see horizontal gene transfer between many different unicellular photosynthesizing species

[@Nitsirtriscuit]

This concept is already in play with algaes and photosynthetic bacterias that we use for bio oils, except kinda the opposite effect from what you’re imagining. We can easily make these organisms super efficient mass producers in the lab. But when we put that plump little organism in a trough or stream outside they are candy to the rest of the food chain. The genetics die with that generation and they have to be reseeded in the lab because they can’t out reproduce their predation rate. A fundamental survival strategy is to *not* get fat and full of nutrients, because organisms like that are first in line to get eaten. We get around this with our crops by protecting them (kinda, you should see the damage one bear can do to a corn field or one goat to an alfalfa field or one pest to a crop without anti pest genes, etc), and natural “high yield” food plants thrive commonly by making their reproduction linked to their predation-like seeds being pooped around- or by protecting their storage like underground tubers or spikes or woody shells… all of those options present extra obstacles that eat up energy to harvest them. But the more nutritious it is, the more effort all of our competitors will make to eat it before we want to harvest it. It’ll be interesting to see how this tries to go forward.

[@reidmock2165]

@@Nitsirtriscuit I appreciate the comment but I have to say, that's a really bad comparison. These situations aren't as related as you make them sound

[@cod4razorgt398]

lets make this channel more popular, the videos are insanely good and the views dont correspond to the quality they deliver

[@ShieldAre]

Imagine how insane it would be, if we developed a substantially better method of photosynthesis in a plant... and then that plant escaped, and thanks to its massive advantage in photosynthesis, it would outcompete all the natural plants. Yet it would be amazing for food production. Imagine we could double our crop yields.

[@drj9506]

One of the greatest videos I've ever seen thank you.

[@NikiHerl]

Aren't there a few specific plants that use a different, more efficient process of photosynthesis? I'm pretty sure I heard something like that - does anyone know the plant's/process' name?

[@NikiHerl]

Ah, found a relevant video: "Fixing the flaw in Photosynthesis" by But Why?. The different processes are called C3 ("normal") photosynthesis and C4 photosynthesis. The latter occurs in some hot+arid-adapted plants.

[@ArisaemaDracontium]

This technology could be as impactful as nuclear fission, and would need to be as carefully managed and regulated. The potential benefits of more efficiently growing food crops could be enormous. But the ecological damage that could be caused by species of plants with this fundamental improvement on photosynthesis escaping into the wild could be catastrophic.

[@ruvintheekshana7121]

Can see you getting well-known, Vox level work and even more just from the enthusiasm

[@TorturedMan-yg7wy]

There is probably a reason it evolved this way and I really don't want to find out why.

[@robertunderwood1011]

I was under the impression that RuBisCO had been bypassed by Tobias Erb whom you cite I was also under the impression that the pathways to starch synthesis have been recently achieved The world should be jumping up and down and screaming for joy Can I assume that this means that farming can be bypassed and that the fundamental ingredients of human nutrition can be had by other means? I understand that electrochemistry applied to cyanobacteria canal produce abundant protein Seems like we’re in for some very interesting changes ahead !

[@zilvoxidgod]

I wonder if uncontrolled plants with a new better enzyme would act as invasive species

[@kangkarino]

maybe it's inefficient for a reason. Nature is all about equilibrium with all species. If we move the equilibrium, maybe symbiosis with other species is disturbed and the plants cannot thrive.

[@gamers-xh3uc]

And? We have already destroyed the equilibrium, we have to use iron fist to keep it stable if not everything is gonna be destroyed

[@JKenny44]

​@@gamers-xh3uc Plant are more efficient at photosynthesis as a result of increased Co2 levels. It far outweighs the associated change in temperature.

[@YTChannel344]

This video is soo wholesome, keep up the good work, make more content. This is good stuff!

[@michaelbuckers]

Might have something to do with the fact that it evolved at the time where earth atmosphere was 99% CO2 and now it's well below 0.1%.

[@luddity]

Every day brings fresh horrors to bedevil us from these mad scientists in their neverending quest to redesign every aspect of nature.

[@cykonot]

it's been around for a while. maybe not the best scaffold, but well-suited to the current metabolome.

[@bipo4715]

So fascinating! Amazing video!

[@mactan_sc]

it really really sucks that even if a public university discovers a good way to do this, some fucking dow monsanto will get to squat on the patent and exploit it on everybody elses dime

[@jeanettemarkley7299]

Sounds great, but won't someone own the food then? What could go wrong?

[@Vagolyk]

Don't listen to them plants, you're perfect as you are. Definitely an interesting endeavour considering, how we all live on photosynthesis. Maybe some day I can just shove salts and water into my mouth and absorb the energy of the sun directly.

[@solidorsharp3091]

Plant science languages will be redefined the conventional wisdom has deep roots.

[@byurBUDdy]

Plants seem to be thriving presently according to research due to increased availability of CO2 relative to the past. Perhaps the problem is due to the lack of CO2 and the abundance of oxygen in our atmosphere. When you possess an atmosphere that has around 200,000 ppm of oxygen verses CO2 that is only 400 ppm then on average it is more likely to pick up the more abundant element. Perhaps the study should include tests that increase the availability of CO2, and see if a higher concentration of that substance changes the efficiency of the protein. Kind of how the efficiency of a internal combustion engine changes based on the fuel mixture.

[@JKenny44]

Amen. Glad some people still thinking.

[@eduardopupucon]

C3 photosynthesis completely halts at 35C and c4 photosynthesis halts at 40C, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere doesn't matter.

[@byurBUDdy]

@@eduardopupucon Good thing that the average global temperature is 15C. Though my comment was in reference to the idea that the protein appears to be slow and inefficient. From what I can tell, the protein in question apparently emerged near the beginning of photosynthesis in plant life, when Earth had a far larger amount of CO2, at 3000ppm.

[@comradesillyotter1537]

​@byurBUDdy which would be how long ago now?

[@fbrtnrsthf]

A very informative video about an ingenious and promising concept.

[@chiefschillaxn1781]

If it ain't broke, don't fit it. Heat stress in plants is a farming practice issue, not global warming. This is just another handicap to poor farming practices. The chemical companies open their pockets up to the universities and get their support but roundup ready crops have some of the weakest genetics and lowest yields I seen in a real world setting.

[@SomeoneCommenting]

Maybe investigating on desert plants can reveal clues of how to make the molecule more efficient. After all, these plants are able to survive and reproduce in the worst conditions possible. If you give them good conditions, they should explode in productivity.

[@asmithgames5926]

Photosynthesis is getting worse because of geoengineering. American and European militarybjets are doing cloud seeding. They turb a beautiful day into a cloudy day. The clouds look chemical wnd artificial because they are. This blocks some of the sun. This makes photosynthesis less efficient.

[@aleksanderagiurre29]

There are plants that have carbon concentrating mechanisms to increase rubiscos efficiency and decrease photorespiration. Plants like cacti, algae who have structures called pyrenoids. Look up C4 photosynthesis and CAM photosynthesis Really cool video but I wish the video got more technical, saying rubisco grabs an oxygen rather than a carbon makes it harder for me to understand, you could have just said the enzyme can react with oxygen instead of carbon and then give the name of this malfunction and I would have liked to know if this happened in light or dark reactions i had to figure that out for myself Knowing how diverse the plant kingdom is we can only assume theres a plant that handles rubisco better than some, throughout biology we can start to see “minor” imperfections in things that still took billions of years to build, things like coral bleaching can be another example of photosynthesis not working very well at hotter temperatures.

[@carolinesherman]

this channel is popping off

[@Elkardashev]

New favourite channel 🙌🙌

[@meinratsenf]

Great video, I love the analogy with assembly line. I also think its a great idea to temper with and alternate one of the most important enzymes in our biosphere, as I understood. Once again, brilliant system engineering from our species. There is a problem: slow and faulty enzyme. Solution: lets make it faster Now thinking again about the assembly line analogy... maybe its not ideal to look at it from that perspective 🤔

[@liberty-matrix]

"There are huge non climate effects of carbon dioxide which are overwhelmingly favorable which are not taken into account. To me that's the main issue that the earth is actually growing greener. This has been actually measured from satellites the whole earth is growing greener as a result of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. So it's increasing agricultural yields, it's increasing the forests, it's increasing all kinds of growth in the biological world and that's more important and more certain than the effects on climate." ~Freeman Dyson, Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.

[@punditgi]

Very cool. There is hope after all! 🎉😊

[@maxdon2001]

Great video!

[@vinniepeterss]

just found out the channel, and i'm hooked!

[@hawkingdawking4572]

Great video. Need a million views for sure.

[@dandavatsdasa8345]

Cross Breeding plants has had great advantages. Are we helping agriculture as well as the whole environment and conservation?

[@vinniepeterss]

great topic!

[@attilio7350]

The rubisco enzyme is purposely inefficient as we depict it. The enzyme needs to work in strict contact with ferredoxin which can catalyse some dangerous reactions resulting in ROS that can kill the plant if RuBisCo incorporates more O2 than CO2. This can happen in a CO2-less or lightless ambient, in which the inefficacy of rubisco prevents the death of plants. So nature and evolution nailed it as the way it is, and we cannot do that better.

[@Gelatinocyte2]

Prokaryotic autotrophs are so much better at sequestering CO2 - especially cyanobacteria, which are the ancestral relatives of the plants' chloroplasts.

[@w01dnick]

Maybe more efficient RuBisCO was produced at some time in the past, but those plant was draining microelements from earth too fast, so it became not suitable for plant life anymore, so they all died.

[@cohenlockwood6066]

*Rubisco catched oxygen* The whole cell system: Ughhh not again!

[@saidencloydalim4348]

You earned a subscriber

[@leonardzpl2063]

That is so cool!

[@madongseoksbiceps]

you need more subscribers! this is good stuff

[@alejohernandez75]

There are more trees in the northern hemisphere today than there was 100 years ago. The Sahara desert has been shrinking. It's called greening because plants are reclaiming the desert. Higher CO2 concentrations are allowing plants to get the CO2 they need to survive while losing less water. 100,000 years ago Florida was under water due to higher global temperatures melting the poles. Humans reached North America 20,000 years ago when temperatures were much colder allowing them to cross lower sea levels using ice sheats. These nerds with their "save the world" experiments worry me more than climate change which has occurred throughout the history of the earth.

[@peglin5117]

great vid

[@RaymondDay]

So this also helps us to turn oxygen with the sugar into energy in our bodies? At least for that energy to get in our cells.

[@nutzeeer]

I wonder if the benefit of c4 and cam plants can be built into c3 plants

[@omegahaxors3306]

It's being worked on.

[@elliottitommyngo2501]

In that research, how can the scientists know the bacteria stay alive because the Rubisco works better but not other ways like the FRK work less or the product of FRK being degraded by other ways instead of Rubisco?

[@ananz9233]

The word Rubisco gave me biology class flashbacks but i don’t even remember what it is

[@jenm1]

I think we need more CAM and c4 plants as well.

[@JoeMickisfreakingamazing]

Robbie is doing some cool work, but if he creates a rubisco prion we’re all screwed lol

[@nathandw82]

Is it accurate to characterize this process as evolution? As I understood it these scientists are engineering new forms of Rubisco not applying random mutations. And they’re not using natural selection they are simply testing to see if the changes they have made work. Am I missing something?

[@Nealetony]

What did plants do in the Cretaceous?

[@SomeoneCommenting]

Rubsico sounds like if Nabisco started selling Rubik's Cubes.

[@LoganDark4357]

I can't hear you over the music

[@justinpatterson5291]

I've worked with field batch tests of certain crop traits- like pest resistance or weather tolerance. Interesting line of work.

[@Eveseptir]

I love learning new things 😁

[@SalvatoreEscoti]

That is why Trees need so many leafs in order to produce enough energy

[@derpitydoo8681]

Can't wait for highly efficient super plants to invade

[@riverbandit2138]

We should appreciate scientists more, THEY are the reason all of us are still alive today

[@divyamshukla147]

OK...That's Interesting to know

[@matiasnieto725]

Hi, I'm a Biotec student and I'm in mi second year. I got so interested in this topic and I would like to know how to know more about recent descoveries and investigation related with this. If someone can give me some advise I would be very grateful!!! This was really good video btw

[@KohuGaly]

You can probably use google scholar, or similar search tools to look for recent scientific papers on the theme. They usually reference other related studies in their references or vice versa. Also, the authors tend to work on similar projects throughout their carriers, so look up other papers by the same authors. It's kinda like browsing wikipedia, except it's the entire internet and the links are bibliographic references instead of URLs.