Abstract
The first stable product of photosynthetic carbon fixation by land plants is either the three-carbon molecule phosphoglycerate (in C3 plants) or the four-carbon compounds malate or aspartate (in C4 and CAM (crassulacean-acid metabolism) plants). Reinfelder et al. infer that a C4 biochemical pathway of carbon fixation also operates in marine diatoms1,2 on the basis of their discovery of the enzyme phosphoenolpyruvate (PEP) carboxylase and of their 14C-tracer results in the marine diatom Thalassiosira weissflogii. However, we consider that further analysis is called for to demonstrate that this marine diatom meets all the criteria for C4 photosynthesis.
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