Photosynthetic characteristics of PEPC transgenic rice

Abstract

With the rapid development of molecular biological technology in the 1990s, the transfer of foreign genes into crops has become a routine, making it possible to introduce genes that encode the C4 photosynthesis enzyme into C3 plants. Ku et al (1999) were the first to successfully introduce the intact gene of maize phospho- enol pyruvate carboxylase (PEPC), which is the key enzyme in the C4 photosynthesis pathway in maize, into a C3 crop such as rice. They obtained plants that express a high level of photosynthetic activity, even exceeding that in maize. We thus propagated and identified transgenic rice plants in every generation and are now in the 7 th generation.