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The Calvin cycle is at the centre of plant metabolism and the sequence of reactions were elucidated in the 1950’s by Calvin and colleagues. However, this pathway has a complex set of regulatory mechanisms governing the activity of the enzymes involved, some of which have only been revealed in recent years and the significance of this regulation in vivo has not been fully elucidated. Furthermore the major role of this pathway is to furnish the plant with the carbon skeletons to enable the synthesis of all the organic molecules need for plant growth and development. The regulation of flux from the Calvin cycle to these pathways is not well understood and how this changes in different cell types or during development.
This talk will highlight some of these issues demonstrating where the function of the Calvin cycle has been manipulated in transgenice plants and unexpected results obtained, including overexpression of the plastid transketolase (TK), predicted to increase photosynthesis resulted in a chlorotic phenotype and antisense expression of the CP12 protein (involved in regulating activity of phosphoribulokinase) and NADP-GAPDH caused severe growth defects and a reprogramming of metabolism