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Determining The Effect Of Substitutions At Alanine 47 In Synechococcus Pcc6301 Ribulose-1,5-Bisphosphate Carboxylase/Oxygenase (Rubisco), Christopher R. Salyer

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Mutant screening and genetic selection in various organisms have shown that residues far from the active site of ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (RubisCO) can influence catalytic efficiency and CO2/O2 specificity. Because RubisCO catalyzes the rate-limiting step of photosynthesis, further study of these sites distant from the primary reaction center may provide the necessary information for engineering an increase in primary productivity of crop plants. In a previously described system of random mutagenesis and bioselection (Smith, 2002), the RubisCO genes from the cyanobacterium Synechococcus PCC6301, were randomly mutated and introduced into the photosynthetic bacterium Rhodobacter capsulatus. An A47T substitution resulted in a very …