This is a scientific Americans 60 second science. I'm Steve Mursky.

Photosynthesis is surprisingly inefficient only of the order of one to two percent

and one of the main culprits is an enzyme called Rabisco.

Laura Bartter, a biological chemist at Imperial College London.

Scientific American Editor-in-Chief MarDee Christina recorded these comments when they

chatted at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos. That enzyme Rubisco?

Because it's vital for the first major step in photosynthesis, it's probably the most abundant

enzyme on the planet and it's worked fine for a very long time, but for our needs

we humans want it to work better.

And I'm very interested in trying to improve upon this enzyme because it's both slow and it also suffers from a lack of specificity.

And when it can catalyze a reaction with carbon dioxide that you want but also a

competing reaction with oxygen and so we're looking at ways that we can enhance the

local concentration of carbon dioxide around

Rabisco to increase its efficiency and ultimately increased crop yield.

Barter explained how she's trying to do that at a talk she gave at the forum.

There are a suite of enzymes that are involved in the capture and release of carbon dioxide

and we're synthesizing some molecules that can mimic this behavior

with the hope that they can be sprayed on crops

much in the same way as a fertilizer

and will be taken up by the plant

and will increase the concentration of carbon dioxide

around Rabisco inside the plant and increase. the concentration of carbon dioxide around

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