Plant Respiration Not Just An Evolutionary

Leftover, Study Shows

ScienceDaily (July 26, 2004) — A biological process in plants, thought to be useless and even
wasteful, has significant benefits and should not be engineered out -- particularly in the face of
looming climate change, says a team of UC Davis researchers.

See also:
Plants & Animals

• Endangered Plants
• Botany
• Nature
• Agriculture and Food
• Pests and Parasites
• Ecology Research

Reference

• Photosynthesis
• Biodegradation
• Chlorophyll
• Chloroplast

The researchers have found that the process, photorespiration, is necessary for healthy plant
growth and if impaired could inhibit plant growth, particularly as atmospheric carbon dioxide
rises as it is globally. Their findings are published this week in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences.

Over the past two hundred years, scientists have come to understand that plants are amazing
biochemical factories that harness energy from sunlight to convert water and carbon dioxide into
sugars that fuel the plant, while giving off oxygen.

Though elegantly simple in concept, this process, known as photosynthesis, is remarkably

complex in detail. And for years, researchers have been puzzled by another process,
photorespiration, which seems to have annoyingly associated with photosynthesis down the
evolutionary pathway.

Photorespiration has appeared to be downright wasteful because it virtually undoes much of the
work of photosynthesis by converting sugars in the plant back into carbon dioxide, water and
energy.

Believing that photorespiration is a consequence of the higher levels of atmospheric carbon

dioxide in long past ages, many scientists concluded that photorespiration is no longer necessary.
Some have even set about to genetically engineer crop plants so that the activity of the enzyme
that initiates both the light-independent reactions of photosynthesis and photorespiration would
favor photosynthesis to a greater extent and minimize photorespiration.

The result, they have thought, would be more productive crop plants that make more efficient
use of available resources.

But the new UC Davis study suggests that there is more to photorespiration than meets the eye
and any attempts to minimize its activity in crop plants would be ill advised.

"Photorespiration is a mysterious process that under present condition dissipates about 25

percent of the energy that a plant captures during photosynthesis," said Arnold Bloom, a
professor in UC Davis' vegetable crops department and lead researcher on the study. "But our
research has shown that photorespiration enables the plant to take inorganic nitrogen in the form
of nitrate and convert it into a form that is useful for plant growth."

The UC Davis team used two different methods to demonstrate in both wheat and Arabidopsis, a
common research plant, that when plants are exposed to elevated levels of atmospheric carbon
dioxide or low levels of oxygen -- both conditions that inhibit photorespiration -- nitrate
assimilation in the plant's shoot slows down. Eventually, a shortage of nitrogen will curtail the
plant's growth.

"This explains why many plants are unable to sustain rapid growth when there is a significant
increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide," said Bloom. "And, as we anticipate a doubling of
atmospheric carbon dioxide associated with global climate change by the end of this century, our
results suggest that it would not be wise to decrease photorespiration in crop plants."

The UC Davis study was supported by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of
Agriculture and an Israel Binational Agricultural Research and Development Fund fellowship.

Adapted from materials provided by University Of California - Davis.