The contradiction between the increasing population and the decrease of tillable land areas is becoming more and more serious in our country. Food security is an important guarantee for sustainable development of our national economy. Photosynthesis is the basis for crop yield. Improving crop photosynthetic efficiency is one of the important approaches to increase crop yield. In this review, we summarized the recent advances in engineering photosynthetic performance by synthetic biology from three key aspects including absorption, transduction and conversion of light energy, light utilization efficiency and carbon assimilation. We also addressed the prospects of its application in increasing photosynthetic efficiency through synthetic biology principles, which may provide important theoretical support and key biotechnology to increase grain production.
我国人口增多与耕地面积减少的矛盾日益突出，粮食安全已成为我国国民经济可持续发展的重要保障。光合作用是作物产量形成的物质基础，提高作物光能利用效率是提高作物产量的重要途径之一。本文从光合作用过程中光能高效吸收、传递与转化，光能高效利用和碳同化等三大模块综述了近期科学家利用合成生物学对光合作用改造的最新进展。最后我们对其在农业中的应用前景进行了展望，通过合成生物学原理提高光合作用效率可能将为增加粮食产量提供重要理论支撑和关键生物技术。.
Keywords: light utilization efficiency; photosynthesis; synthetic biology.