Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 16
The Chlorophyll Biosynthetic Heterogeneity
and Chloroplast Bioengineering
You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can't get them across,
your ideas won't get you anywhere. (Lee Iacocca)
16.1
Introduction
By the year 2030, the world population may increase significantly and top the nine
billion benchmark. This is particularly significant since worldwide there has been a
decline in cereal yield that is causing the annual rate of increase in yield to fall
below the rate of population increase. Furthermore it will be difficult to increase
the land area under cultivation without serious environmental complications. As a
consequence the increased demand for food and fiber will have to be met by higher
agricultural plant productivity.
Since plant productivity depends on photosynthetic efficiency, there is hope that
agricultural productivity can be significantly increased by alteration of the photo-
synthetic unit size (Rebeiz et al.
2003a
). Indeed, on the basis of recent advances in
the understanding of the chemistry and biochemistry of the greening process and
significant advances in molecular biology, we believe that alteration of the PSU size
has become a realistic possibility.
Life in the biosphere is carbon based. All molecules needed for life are made up
of a carbon skeleton which is complemented by organic elements such as O, H, N,
and inorganic elements such as K, P, Ca, Fe, etc. Carbon, O and H of organic
compounds originate in CO
2
and H
2
O. The carbon skeleton is assembled via the
process of photosynthesis that essentially converts solar energy into chemical
energy. Nitrogen originates in NH3 and inorganic elements originate in the rocks
of the biosphere and are incorporated into the carbon skeleton via enzymatic
reactions. Chemical energy consists of the covalent bond energy embedded into
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