| The project aims at increasing growth rates and yield of crop plants by improving their carbon fixing capabilities. It gathers the expertise of eight European laboratories with state-of-the-art structural and molecular biology techniques to map and characterise the carbon fixing enzyme rib lose. 1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (Rubicon) from marine arctic algae, which have been found to harbour a superior form of Rubicon. The feasibility of exploiting the results for agriculture will be tested in two model studies in which the endogenous Rubicon enzyme in the unicellular green alga Chlamydomonas Reinhardt and in crop plants will be replaced by the more efficient variant from marine algae. The research, which is supported by an SME involvement, will help European agriculture to stay competitive in a field, which, because of its potential economic impact, is heavily investigated in the US and other western countries. |