#rubisco

[chronically-a-bacteriophage]

Rubisco is a fantastic name for an enzyme. Biologists really did a great thing there

[notbenne]

He's so silly wtf

[rjzimmerman]

This enzyme is responsible for life on Earth. It’s a hot mess.

And it’s getting worse with extreme heat.

Excerpt from this story from Grist:

Pretty much all life on Earth – plants, animals, humans – in large part, owe their entire existence to one microscopic protein. It’s called ribulose bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase, better known as RuBisCO, and it’s an enzyme: a biological machine that helps turn CO2 into energy.

Of the millions of enzymes on earth, RuBisCO might be the most important. It’s essential to photosynthesis, and without it, plants would be unable to grow. Without RuBisCO, nearly all life on Earth would starve.

But even though it’s everywhere, and has been around for billions of years, RuBisCO kind of sucks at its job. And it’s getting worse as the world gets hotter.

Today, a global team of scientists is trying to accomplish something that evolution has previously failed to do: building a better RuBisCO.

This enzyme performs even worse during hot weather. This means that as climate change warms our planet, our farms may produce less food, and our plants could get worse at sequestering carbon.

[captain-glucose-sidekick]

Daily life

Have a casual Rubisco Boy, slightly pissed. I found out that drawings OCs was the best way for me to train drawing, but this one is a bit old now, I drew it on March 26th 2021 !

[amoebasisters]

Really, Rubisco? ರ_ರ

[puff-and-ball]

Ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase really do be like that

[currentsinbiology]

Scientists Have 'Hacked Photosynthesis' In Search Of More Productive Crops 

Rubisco has one job. It picks up carbon dioxide from the air, and it uses the carbon to make sugar molecules. It gets the energy to do this from the sun. This is photosynthesis, the process by which plants use sunlight to make food, a foundation of life on Earth.  "But it has what we like to call one fatal flaw," Cavanagh continues. Unfortunately, Rubisco isn't picky enough about what it grabs from the air. It also picks up oxygen. "When it does that, it makes a toxic compound, so the plant has to detoxify it."

[pipcallsrio]

Rubisco & Esmaila doodles~