Hacking Photosynthesis

Humans are shaping, or attempting to shape nature by replicating photosynthesis. They hope to use plants to gather renewable energy. The scientists doing this believe that they can harness the energy gathering power of plants, because plants have been gathering energy from sunlight for millions of years. The hope is that synthetic photosynthesis will increase food production in the coming years.The plan is to alter a specific molecule that plants use. This molecule is called Rubisco. Rubisco takes carbon dioxide out of the air to help plants create oxygen. Unfortunately, Rubisco often takes in oxygen instead, which is the waste of the plant’s energy. Taking in oxygen creates a toxic substance that takes all of the plant’s cells to remove. To test if this could be altered, tobacco plants were given much less carbon dioxide than usual. Some of the plants fared well in these conditions. Because of global warming, these conditions will become more common. The plants that succeeded were removed from the greenhouse and grew four times larger. There is a lot of potential in this plan. Food production will be able to increase exponentially and crops can thrive even with altered levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide.