Identification of Key Players in Photosynthesis: Redesigning C3 Crops

Sadeghi, Maryam; Ghaffari, Mohammad Reza; Ebrahimpour, Farshad; Banaei Moghaddam, Ali Mohammad

doi:10.30473/cb.2025.73383.1998

Identification of Key Players in Photosynthesis: Redesigning C3 Crops

Document Type : Review

Authors

¹ PhD Student, DNA and genome Bank, Iranian Biological Resource Center, Karaj, Alborz, Iran

² Agricultural Biotechnology Research Institute of Iran (ABRII)

³ Associate Professor, Department of Agriculture, Payame Noor, Tehran, Iran

⁴ Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics University of Tehran

10.30473/cb.2025.73383.1998

Abstract

Photosynthesis is a fundamental process, converts solar energy and carbon dioxide into carbohydrates, sustaining all life on Earth. With the global population approaching nine billion, the demand for food and energy has significantly increased. Furthermore, unexpected climate changes such as drought and floods have reduced agricultural land, highlighting the urgent need to improve crop productivity. An ambitious idea to address the global food demand and enhance crop efficiency in hot and arid climates involves redesigning the anatomical and biochemical pathways of C3 plants based on the metabolic blueprint of C4 plants. The structural complexity of key enzymes, such as Rubisco, along with the need for proper subunit alignment in the holoenzyme, poses significant challenges to enhancing photosynthetic efficiency through manipulating these enzymes. Since the discovery of photosynthetic pathways, studies have attempted to enhance the expression of certain enzymes from the C4 photosynthetic pathway in C3 plants. Although efforts have not yet directly led to significant improvements in photosynthetic efficiency or yield, they underscore the high potential of metabolic engineering as a precise and effective tool for crop improvement. Recent research on engineering C3 plants has demonstrated that introducing specific genes regulating leaf anatomy and C4 photosynthetic processes can significantly enhance photosynthesis and yield. Furthermore, emerging findings suggest that enzymes from simpler photosynthetic organisms, such as cyanobacteria and algae, may offer new avenues for substantial improvements in C3 photosynthetic efficiency. This study discusses these advancements and explores strategies for engineering metabolic pathways to architect C3 crops based on C4 models.

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