Welcome to the blog for Colgate University's interdisciplinary course on food. This is the place to keep up with what students in the course are experiencing in their work at Common Thread Community Farm and through their everyday encounters with food.

Monday, December 5, 2016

Speeding up Photosynthesis.

A recent study published in Scientific America has shown that plant biologists may soon be able to boost crop productivity by nearly 20% by increasing the amount of light plants use in photosynthesis.  The scientists in U.C Berkeley and University of California labs found that the three genes involved in protecting plants when they get too much light.  If a plant is overexposed to sunlight, the photosynthetic machinery can be damaged severely.  The scientists were able to increase the gene expression in order to increase productivity of these GM tobacco plants in field studies.

The researchers then found a method, which speeds up the recovery of the photo-protection and they were able to prove this in the laboratory.  The aforementioned method consists of boosting the expression of three different genes that are expressed in tobacco leaves.  The results showed that when they boosted the expression of the three different genes the photosynthetic machinery turned off more quickly.  The researchers utilized this method in order to rapidly test gene expression in tobacco leaves, and concluded that they were able to make the photosynthetic process way more efficient.

The implications of this study are very significant as it may have ramifications for agricultural technology.  By the simple experiment of boosting the NPQ gene in Tobacco plants, scientists have found that they are capable of making photosynthesis more efficient.  This could increase crop yields dramatically, or even make it possible to grow different kinds of plants in different climates as photosynthesis can now be made much more efficient.



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