Abstract
Plant chassis has emerged as the platform with great potential for bioproduction of high value-added products such as recombinant protein, vaccine and natural product. However, as the primary metabolic pathway, photorespiration results in the loss of photosynthetically fixed carbon compounds and limits the exploration of plant chassis. People are endeavored to reduce the photorespiration energy or carbon loss based on variation screening or genetic engineering. Insomuch as protein engineering of Rubisco has not resulted in the significant improvement of Rubisco specificity which is linked to the direct CO2 fixation, the biosynthetic approaches of photorespiration bypass are gaining much more attention and manifested great potentiality in conferring efficient assimilation of CO2 in plant chassis. In this review, we summarize the recent studies on the metabolic pathway design and implementation of photorespiration alternative pathway aiming to provide clues to efficiently enhance carbon fixation via the modification of photorespiration in plant chassis for bioproduction. These will benefit the development of plant synthetic metabolism for biorefineries via improvement of artificial carbon sequestration cycle, particularly for the mitigation of serious challenges such as extreme climate change, food and energy shortages in the future.
Introduction
As the global human population rapidly increases, new and efficient biological systems are urgent to be obtained to meet the growing demand for resources (). Synthetic biology has been established to be one of the powerful platforms that focuses on the design of novel synthetic biological pathways or redesign of existing natural systems which could fulfill the requirement mentioned above (). Although microbial chassises are widely used in present industrial bioproduction, their improvement is greatly challenged due to the lack of post-translational modifications, compartmentalization, non-functional nature and negligible activity of some proteins (). Plant chassis, gradually emerging as the platform with great potential for bioproduction of high value-added products through manipulation of synthetic biology, is becoming the ideal and sustainable platform for their ability to directly use sunlight and CO2 to generate a variety of organic compounds (). Thus, plant synthetic biology is expected to present great potentiality in leading the development of molecular farming to benefit the production of food, fuels, fodder, therapeutics and environmental welfare to create totally synthetic life forms or components (; ; ).
In optimizing the plant chassis which is suitable for the bioproduction of value-added metabolites, people are mostly focusing on the modification of carbon flux in C3 plants such as tobacco, rice and tomato. Ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase oxygenase (Rubisco) is the first and important enzyme in C3 pathway to fix atmospheric CO2 (). Both 3-PGA and 2-PG are generated due to the enzymatic activity of Rubisco (; ). 2-PG, which could not be directly used for carbon fixation, inhibits the activity of chloroplastic enzymes (; ). To degrade 2-PG, a photorespiration pathway was developed to recycle 2-PG into 3-PGA that re-enter the Calvin-Benson cycle during evolution, through a serial of catalysis in chloroplast, peroxisome, mitochondrion and cytosol (). During the process, two molecules of 2-PG are converted into one molecule of 3-PGA and one carbon atom is lost as CO2 in the mitochondria (), resulting in 25% of carbon loss (). Furthermore, the photorespiratory effects could be enhanced by serious conditions such as high temperature and water shortage (; ). Intensive studies are tentatively performed to decrease the carbon loss in photorespiration by genetic manipulation of Rubisco aiming to improve its selectivity and kinetic properties but without great effects (; ). By contrast, the design of novel photorespiratory bypass by biosynthetic approaches has brought attention and is thought to play a major role in reducing carbon release of native photorespiration. To date, several novel photorespiratory bypasses have been implemented into plants and remarkably developed (; ; ; ; ). The present review summarizes the novel biosynthetic pathways of reducing carbon release via the design of photorespiratory bypasses, and analyzes their potential effects. Then future perspective is suggested aiming to provide people with enlightenment to make progressive development in this field.
Biosynthetic photorespiratory bypasses implemented into plants
1. Among the reported photorespiratory bypass pathways implemented into plants, E. coli-originated glyoxylate oxidation catalysis has been extensively tested (; ; ; ; ; ; ). Glycolate is converted into glyoxylate by glycolate dehydrogenase (GDH) or glycolate oxidase (GLO), followed by the generation of tartronic semialdehyde and CO2 from two molecules of glyoxylate catalyzed by glyoxylate carboligase (GCL). Tartronic semialdehyde is then converted to glycerate by tartronic semialdehyde reductase (TSR) in the chloroplast, and all the catalytic steps are established in the chloroplast (Figure 1, fonts marked by red and orange color). H2O2, as the by-product of GLO-mediated catalysis, is decomposed via the introduction of catalase (CAT) ().
FIGURE 1
This bypass manifested several advantages compared to the natural photorespiration pathway. Firstly, CO2 is shifted and released into the chloroplast, where it could be re-cycled into Calvin-Bension metabolism. Secondly, the NH3 production is greatly avoided. Thirdly, the metabolite transport between organelles is bypassed, whereas between 14 and 18 transport processes are required in natural photorespiration (
2. In the second bypass, a cycle to completely decarboxylate glycolate is introduced into the chloroplast (
This bypass shifts CO2 release to the chloroplast with no NH3 production as in the first bypass, but impedes the Calvin-Benson cycle due to no 3-PGA recovery (
3. In the third bypass, glycolate is converted to CO2 completely by endogenous enzymes in the chloroplast (
4. The first bypass located in the peroxisome is a simplified version of E. coli glyoxylate oxidation catalysis (
5. Another bypass located in the peroxisome is a β-hydroxyaspartate cycle also starts from glyoxylate (
Potentially achieved photorespiratory bypasses in plants
In addition to the implemented bypasses described above, there are some promising alternative bypasses that could be experimentally tested in plants. Such as similar to the third bypass in the chloroplast, glycolate is converted to two molecules of CO2 completely (
FIGURE 2

The potentially achieved biosynthetic bypasses of photorespiration in plants. Two glycolate decarboxylation bypasses are marked by orange (
Furthermore, the carbon release is always detected in photorespiration and alternative pathways need to be tested in plants that could recycle glycolate without CO2 release. One hypothetical bypass is to reduce 2-PG to phosphoglycolaldehyde, which is then combined with dihydroxyacetone phosphate to produce xylulose bisphosphate. Then xylulose bisphosphate can be dephosphorylated to xylulose-5-phosphate back into Calvin-Benson cycle (
A carbon-positive photorespiratory shunt for converting downstream products was suggested as a strategy beyond zero-carbon release bypasses. A promising alternative pathway that needs to be tested in plants is to convert glycolate to pyruvate, which requires introducing seven enzymes and fixing one HCO3− (
Perspective on the modification of photorespiration by synthetic biology
The reported bypasses may be limited by contingencies of evolutionary change and natural selection due to the attempts to reduce carbon release are inferred from biochemistry and theory (
Since most of the bypasses are targeted to the chloroplast, it is necessary to have efficient and precise chloroplast transit peptides (CTP) to target enzymes into the chloroplast. CTP recognition is governed by sequence-independent interactions and vectorial-specific recognition domains by a series of in vitro and in vivo experiments (
The availability of both reducing equivalent and ATP is crucial to bioproduction. In plants, ATP and NADPH are generated in the process of photosynthesis in the chloroplast (
The pathway targeted to the mitochondrion has not been evaluated for the establishment of photorespiratory bypasses. Glycine and serine from photorespiration could serve as the substrates for bypass design in the mitochondrion. Glycine is important for synthesis of collagen, elastin and other protein in mammals (
In conclusion, novel and technological solutions must be obtained to further increase the productivity of crops because traditional genetic engineering may reach a plateau (
Statements
Author contributions
QW and LZ drafted the manuscript. QW, HY, PC, FC, and LZ reviewed and edited the manuscript. All the authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Funding
This work was supported by grants from Science and Technology Partnership Program, Ministry of Science and Technology of China (KY202001017), Tianjin Synthetic Biotechnology Innovation Capacity Improvement Project (TSBICIP-CXRC-027; TSBICIP-IJCP-001), TIB-VIB Joint Center of Synthetic Biology (TSBICIP-IJCP-002). PC is supported by the Science and Technology Project of CNTC (110202101008, JY-08).
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Publisher’s note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
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Summary
Keywords
carbon fixation, plant chassis, metabolic pathway design, photorespiration, bioproduction
Citation
Wang Q, Yang H, Cao P, Chen F and Zhao L (2022) Biosynthetic approaches to efficient assimilation of CO2via photorespiration modification in plant chassis. Front. Bioeng. Biotechnol. 10:979627. doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2022.979627
Received
27 June 2022
Accepted
13 July 2022
Published
08 August 2022
Volume
10 - 2022
Edited by
Tao Chen, Tianjin University, China
Reviewed by
Chikahiro Miyake, Kobe University, Japan
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© 2022 Wang, Yang, Cao, Chen and Zhao.
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*Correspondence: Lei Zhao, zhaol@tib.cas.cn
This article was submitted to Synthetic Biology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology
Disclaimer
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.