from the taking-over-the-world-one-enzyme-at-a-time dept.
We may now be able to engineer the most important lousy enzyme on the planet
The single most abundant protein on the planet isn't actually very good at its job. And, unfortunately, its job is important: to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and incorporate it into sugars and other molecules that most of Earth's life depends on. Improving its function could help us in a variety of ways, from boosting crop productivity to cleaning up after our carbon emissions.
Unfortunately, the enzyme is also extremely fussy about how it operates, in part as a result of the evolutionary events that put it in plants in the first place. But now, a team of German scientists has figured out how to get the enzyme to work in the standard lab bacteria, E. coli, opening the door slightly to genetically engineering our way to more efficient plants. But the work also makes it clear that things aren't quite as simple as we'd like.
The enzyme has the catchy name "ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase," but everyone knows it as "RuBisCo." Its function in the cell is to take the carbon of carbon dioxide, obtained from the air, and link it to a five-carbon sugar. This makes a six carbon sugar, an essential part of the process of photosynthesis. But it also allows the carbon to be used in a variety of other chemical reactions inside a cell that would never work with carbon dioxide. These include creating the building blocks of DNA and proteins. Through these two functions, the enzyme is essential to most life on Earth.
[...] The bad news? We ultimately need to put these versions back into plants if we're going to make drought-resistant plants and carbon-sucking forests. Given how sensitive the system seems to be to its environment and the other proteins in the cell, that means we probably want to start out with the species we ultimately want to put the genes back into. In other words, if you want to engineer wheat, you probably need to start with the wheat RuBisCo. So there won't be a one-size-fits-all version of any increased-efficiency RuBisCos that we can just pop into any plant we'd like.
Still, the fact that we can now make this enzyme in bacteria is a big step forward. And it could be that the research community will figure out ways of making the system more flexible with time.
Science, 2017. DOI: 10.1126/science.aap9221.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday December 08 2017, @07:08PM (7 children)
Let's figure out who to put this enzyme to work inside the human body. Then we could capture some of the energy we need just by breathing, and reduce carbon pollution at the same time!
Of course, there is the danger that this could turn humans into these [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Friday December 08 2017, @08:01PM
Knights of Sidonia" [wikipedia.org]
I know my preference :)
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 08 2017, @09:22PM (3 children)
We could put chlorophyll in the skin like the future people from those Gene Wolfe books too, might be able to do away with agriculture entirely, although I'd guess we might have other climate related issues at that point (didn't the all plants historical phase collapse into giant wildfires?).
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 08 2017, @09:25PM (2 children)
Not sure I'd want chloroplasts instead of mitochondria.
Wouldn't it be awful if the more time you spent in the sun the fatter you got? Why, you'd have to spend most of your time in a basement if you wanted to stay thin and fit!
Er... hold on a moment here....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 08 2017, @09:37PM
*head explodes*
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 09 2017, @04:10AM
Plants have both chloroplasts and mitochondria....
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday December 08 2017, @09:35PM
Let's figure out who to put this enzyme to work inside the human body.
Would it make the person green?
Hmm....orange + green makes brown.
Trump then kicks himself out of the Whitehouse.
I think we're getting a two-fer on this one guys!
(Score: 2) by Flyingmoose on Friday December 08 2017, @10:47PM
Then we’d have green women. Captain Kirk would approve.
(Score: 3, Informative) by moondrake on Friday December 08 2017, @07:09PM (4 children)
Such stories these days (even in scientific journals) always have the "we must engineer better plants" sentences everywhere.
It is the sad reality that all research needs to give us solutions for problems and thus people happily invent such problems. Nevermind that most solutions are not feasible.
In this case, Rubisco is already doing a pretty good job [pnas.org]. Make it faster, and you make it less efficient, make it less efficient, and it becomes slower. Engineering this enzyme in bacteria is not going to help make better plants (should you want to do that).
Don't get me wrong. I think it is nice that they can do it. I just wish we could do so (and get money to do so) without claiming we are going to increase food production with it.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday December 08 2017, @07:14PM
Make it more efficient, and it becomes less slower! (J/K)
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday December 08 2017, @08:53PM
Balanced by:
And thank god (or mother nature) for that. Imagine a generic version of RuBisCo getting released in the wild and invading all plant life.
Or perhaps patented by a Monsanto like corporation to own food production.
Agreed that hanging a project on claims of food production gains is probably not all that useful.
We don't have a food production problem on earth, we have a distribution problem.
I would think that increased carbon sequestration alone would be justification enough for funding. Why not start with trees.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday December 09 2017, @12:59AM (1 child)
Yeah, all that slanging on RuBisCo as "inefficient" rang false. Sounds awfully similar to the ideas of "junk DNA" and the idea we use only 10% of our brains: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_percent_of_the_brain_myth [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 09 2017, @06:15PM
About the "junk DNA": read up on endogenous retroviruses. Yes, some of our DNA is worse than junk; it's enemy action, plain and simple.
About the brain: you can use 100% of your CPU time running an empty loop, but does it mean you're using your CPU at 100% - or at 0%? Same with your brain; 90% of your neurons can keep busy doing perfectly nothing, like your CPU's circuitry keeps busy running that loop.
Do not mistake Stepmother Nature for some Benevolent Creator Deity. It is totally unlike that.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday December 08 2017, @07:12PM
Fixed the first
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Corelli's A on Friday December 08 2017, @07:16PM (4 children)
That's probably good, otherwise we might have "Oops, we accidentally inserted RuBisCo into everything imaginable, and it's sucking all the CO2 out of the air. We all die."
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday December 08 2017, @07:27PM (2 children)
Its interesting that something so important never evolved on its own, or more realistically I'm sure the alternatives have evolved billions of times but they all die off because there's a little catch... now iron ions are the green plant equivalent of a nerve gas or something similar.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday December 08 2017, @08:15PM
It's probably just that they can't compete in the wild for some reason. However with human help to keeps pests and competing plants under control, maybe it could work.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday December 08 2017, @08:58PM
They did evolve on their own and they didn't all die out.
The story implies every plant species has their own version. Probably for good reason.
One wonders if there could even be a route to plant competition if every plant had exactly the same chemical mechanisms. The first efficient one would starve the others to death, and we would probably live in a sea of primordial green goo.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Funny) by maxwell demon on Friday December 08 2017, @08:30PM
I've got good news to you: Humanity has developed some quite efficient methods to put large quantities of CO2 into the air.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday December 08 2017, @09:30PM (1 child)
I can't be the only one singing "RuBisCo" to myself like those old Nabisco ads.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 09 2017, @06:14AM
Thank you for putting that thought into my head. Dink.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 08 2017, @10:27PM
I did ctrl+f monsanto on TFA, no matches... those sneaky bastards!
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday December 08 2017, @10:41PM
If my skin contained RuBisCo I'd have free candy all day long.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]