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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2021 Apr 29.
Published in final edited form as: Annu Rev Plant Biol. 2020 Mar 9;71:461–485. doi: 10.1146/annurev-arplant-081519-040100

Table 2.

C4, cyanobacterial, and algal CO2 concentrating mechanisms (CCMs) each provide different opportunities and challenges for engineering into land plants

Type of CCM Advantages Challenges
C4 plant Most closely related evolutionarily to C3 plants Requires engineering tissue development to give leaves Kranz anatomy
Both cyanobacteria and algae Operates within a single cell, therefore no need to engineer cell differentiation Requires replacing Rubisco, because Rubisco linkers appear to bind only Rubisco from their host organisms
Cyanobacteria Components are well characterized Most evolutionarily distant from plants
Components are not natively encoded in a eukaryotic nucleus and targeted to a chloroplast
Algae Components are natively encoded in a eukaryotic nucleus and targeted to a chloroplast Components are poorly characterized