Synthetic Biology and Engineering of RuBisCO Acetylation for Enhanced Biotechnological Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide Removal

Coordination : Thierry Meinnel and Dong Xie

During photosynthesis, the enzyme RuBisCO assimilates atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂), a prevalent anthropogenic greenhouse gas, into carbohydrates. This process is crucial for plant productivity, providing food, biomaterials, and energy resources utilized worldwide. However, despite its role as a natural CO₂ scavenger, RuBisCO exhibits low catalytic efficiency. This limitation hampers its performance also in engineered heterotrophic bacteria used for biotechnological CO₂ assimilation. Therefore, understanding how to enhance plant RuBisCO activity is essential for combating climate change and meeting growing demands for food and biofuels.

This synthetic biology project aims to enhance RuBisCO performance in Escherichia coli by combining bacterial molecular biology tools with biochemical investigations to validate the effects. Additionally, this study paves the way to further exploration of whether the corresponding mechanisms might affect environment adaptation and plant resilience to stresses (i.e., better resistance to temperatures), also allowing the development of strategies to boost RuBisCO activity in plants.