Metabolic engineering of photorespiration

The introduction of two alternative glycolate catabolic pathways in the chloroplasts of Arabidopsis thaliana rendered plants with increased biomass. To introduce these synthetic pathways, the selected genes were stepwise integrated in the nuclear genome of wild-type plants. These plants were transformed by Agrobacterium tumefaciens carrying the binary vectors using the floral dip method. Selection of transformants was conducted using different selection agents and the expression of the transgenes was confirmed by PCR and enzyme activity measurements