Arabidopsis thaliana expressing a thermostable chimeric Rubisco activase exhibits enhanced growth and higher rates of photosynthesis at moderately high temperatures

Temperature is one of the most important factors controlling growth, development, and reproduction in plants. The rate of photosynthesis declines at moderately high temperatures in plants and particularly in temperate species like Arabidopsis thaliana. This can be attributed to a reduced ability of Rubisco activase to achieve optimum activation of Rubisco, leading to reduced Rubisco activity. In order to overcome this problem, we transformed the Arabidopsis rca mutant with a more thermostable, chimeric activase where a Rubisco recognition domain in the more thermostable tobacco activase was replaced with that from Arabidopsis. Transgenic lines expressing this activase showed higher rates of photosynthesis than the wild type after a short exposure to higher temperatures and they also recovered better, when they were returned to the normal temperature. Moreover, under extended exposure to moderately elevated temperature, the transgenic lines had higher biomass and seed yield when compared with the wild type plants.