Edward Smith

@tednsmith.bsky.social

Biochemist using flux analysis to investigate the amazing metabolism of plants 🌱🌿🌵👨‍🔬

A big month for engineering photorespiration! More evidence that bypassing photorespiration in rice by converting glycolate to CO2 in chloroplasts can boost yields. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti.... More work needed to ensure gains reach the grains 🍚 but another promising step forward! 🧵

A synthetic glycolate metabolism bypass in rice chloroplasts increases photosynthesis and yield

Photorespiration consumes photosynthetically fixed carbon and reduces yields by 20%–50% in C3 crops. In an attempt to increase photosynthetic efficien…

sciencedirect.com

Really impressive work from Ari and the team - going from an idea all the way to a functional pathway using the latest synbio tools! The CORE cycle is another carbon fixing route that could be used as an alternative to photorespiration in plants. Interested to see where this goes next! 🌱📈

Ari Satanowski@ari-satanowski.bsky.social · last yr.

Excited to share a main project from my PhD, out now in @naturecomms.bsky.social! 📝 We've designed and brought to life the “CORE cycle” – a new-to-nature pathway that provides a novel route for biological CO2 capture 🦠🌱 nature.com/articles/s41... Take a look! Thread below... 🧵

As well as CO2 Rubisco reacts with O2: plants evolved photorespiration to deal with the consequences. It works, but synthetic biology can do better! 🔄 We used metabolic modeling to compare alternative pathways to boost crop yields 🌱 🧵 #ScienceAdvancesResearch www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Alternatives to photorespiration: A system-level analysis reveals mechanisms of enhanced plant productivity

Computational modeling reveals how engineering plants with alternative pathways to photorespiration could boost crop yields.

science.org