What is Rubisco Activase?

Rubisco activase is a nuclear-encoded chloroplast protein that is required for the light activation of ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (Rubisco) in vivo.

What is the purpose of Rubisco?

Ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (Rubisco) catalyzes the rate-limiting step in the Calvin-Benson cycle, which transforms atmospheric carbon into a biologically useful carbon source.

What temp does Rubisco denature?

Rubisco is known to be stable above 50°C (Salvucci and Crafts-Brandner, 2004a, 2004b, 2004c). Arrhenius plots indicated there was a thermal break in the response of Rubisco activity to temperature at about 17°C (data not shown).

What happens when Rubisco denatures?

Above a species-specific temperature, Rubisco activase itself denatures, forming insoluble aggregates that are incapable of removing inhibitors and enhancing Rubisco activation (Feller et al., 1998; Salvucci et al., 2001). Consequently, a high activation state of Rubisco cannot be maintained.

What regulates Rubisco activity?

The activity of Rubisco activase can be regulated by the ADP/ATP ratio in the stroma because ADP inhibits the ATP hydrolysis reaction of the activase, which is required to remove the inhibitors.

What is the importance of Rubisco in the Calvin cycle?

Using the energy carriers formed in the first stage of photosynthesis, the Calvin cycle reactions fix CO2 from the environment to build carbohydrate molecules. An enzyme, RuBisCO, catalyzes the fixation reaction, by combining CO2 with RuBP.

Why is RuBisCO such an inefficient enzyme?

In spite of its central role, rubisco is remarkably inefficient. As enzymes go, it is painfully slow. Typical enzymes can process a thousand molecules per second, but rubisco fixes only about three carbon dioxide molecules per second. Plant cells compensate for this slow rate by building lots of the enzyme.

What is the problem with RuBisCO?

The lazy enzyme “It evolved when oxygen levels in the atmosphere were much lower than today. It represents a frozen accident.” The problem with RuBisCo is that it tends to confuse carbon dioxide with oxygen, which leads to a highly deleterious side reaction, the cleanup of which requires a lot of energy.

How does heat affect Rubisco?

Heat stress inhibits photosynthesis by reducing the activation of Rubisco by Rubisco activase. To determine if loss of activase function is caused by protein denaturation, the thermal stability of activase was examined in vitro and in vivo and compared with the stabilities of two other soluble chloroplast proteins.

What is the effect of temperature on the activities of Rubisco?

The temperature-induced inhibition of Rubisco activation was fully reversible at temperatures below 40°C. In contrast to activation state, total Rubisco activity was not affected by temperatures as high as 45°C.

Why is Rubisco important in the Calvin cycle?

Why is Rubisco so inefficient?

Because of its relatively modest turnover rate (a few catalytic events per second) and the competitive inhibition by oxygen, Rubisco is often viewed as an inefficient catalyst for CO2 fixation.