Identification of Sensitive Enzymes in the Photosynthetic Carbon Metabolism

Understanding and optimizing the CO2 fixation process would allow human beings to address better current energy and biotechnology issues. We focused on modeling the C3 photosynthetic Carbon metabolism pathway with the aim of identifying the minimal set of enzymes whose biotechnological alteration could allow a functional re-engineering of the pathway. To achieve this result we merged in a single powerful pipe-line Sensitivity Analysis (SA), Single- (SO) and Multi-Objective Optimization (MO), and Robustness Analysis (RA). By using our recently developed multipurpose optimization algorithms (PAO and PMO2) here we extend our work exploring a large combinatorial solution space and most importantly, here we present an important reduction of the problem search space. From the initial number of 23 enzymes we have identified 11 enzymes whose targeting in the C3 photosynthetic Carbon metabolism would provide about 90% of the overall functional optimization. Both in terms of maximal CO2 Uptake and minimal Nitrogen consumption, these 11 sensitive enzymes are confirmed to play a key role. Finally we present a RA to confirm our findings. © 2012 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.