Plants characterized by enhanced growth and methods and nucleic acid constructs useful for generating same

#The present invention relates to plants characterized by enhanced growth and to methods and nucleic acid constructs useful for generating same.

#Growth and productivity of crop plants are the main parameters of concern to a commercial grower. Such parameters are affected by numerous factors including the nature of the specific plant and allocation of resources within it, availability of resources in the growth environment and interactions with other organisms including pathogens.

#Growth and productivity of most crop plants are limited by the availability of CO2 to the carboxylating enzyme ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (Rubisco). Such availability is determined by the ambient concentration of CO2 and stomatal conductance, and the rate of CO2 fixation by Rubisco as determined by the Km(CO2) and Vmax of this enzyme [31-33].

#The invention is herein described, by way of example only, with reference to the accompanying drawings. With specific reference now to the drawings in detail, it is stressed that the particulars shown are by way of example and for purposes of illustrative discussion of the preferred embodiments of the present invention only, and are presented in the cause of providing what is believed to be the most useful and readily understood description of the principles and conceptual aspects of the invention. In this regard, no attempt is made to show structural details of the invention in more detail than is necessary for a fundamental understanding of the invention, the description taken with the drawings making apparent to those skilled in the art how the several forms of the invention may be embodied in practice.

#In the drawings:

#FIG. 1 is a schematic representation of a genomic region in Synechococcus sp. PCC 7942 where an insertion (indicated by a star) of an inactivation library fragment led to the formation of mutant IL-2. DNA sequence is available in the GenBank, Accession number U62616. Restriction sites are marked as: A—ApaI, B—BamHI, Ei—EcoRI, E—EcoRV, H—HincII, H—HindIII, K—KpnI, M—MfeI, N—NheI, T—TaqI. Underlined letters represent the terminate position of the DNA fragments that were used as probes. Relevant fragments isolated from an EMBL3 library are marked E1, E2 and E3. P1 and P2 are fragments obtained by PCR. Triangles indicate sites where a cartridge encoding Kanr was inserted. Open reading frames are marked by an arrow and their similarities to other proteins are noted. Sll and slr (followed by four digits) are the homologous genes in Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 [23]; YZ02-myctu, Accession No. Q10536; ICC, Accession No. P36650; Y128-SYNP6, Accession No. P05677; YGGH, Accession No. P44648; Ribosome binding factor A homologous to sll0754 and to P45141; O-acetylhomoserine sulfhydrylase homologous to sll0077 and NifS. ORF280 started upstream of the schematic representation presented herein.

#The present invention is of a method of generating plants characterized by enhanced growth and/or fruit yield and/or flowering rate, of plants generated thereby and of nucleic acid constructs utilized by such a method. Specifically, the present invention can be used to substantially increase the growth rate and/or fruit yield of C3 plants especially when grown under growth-limiting conditions characterized by low humidity and/or a low CO2 concentration.

#The principles and operation of the present invention may be better understood with reference to the drawings and accompanying descriptions.

#Before explaining at least one embodiment of the invention in detail, it is to be understood that the invention is not limited in its application to the details of construction and the arrangement of the components set forth in the following description or illustrated in the drawings. The invention is capable of other embodiments or of being practiced or carried out in various ways. Also, it is to be understood that the phraseology and terminology employed herein is for the purpose of description and should not be regarded as limiting.