As our climate warms, bringing more frequent droughts and heatwaves, the yields of vital staple crops are under threat. But the real battle isn’t just in the parched fields—it’s happening at a microscopic level inside the plants themselves. High temperatures can destabilize the very molecular machinery that sustains life.
At the core of this machinery is photosynthesis, the sun-powered engine that fuels virtually all life on Earth. This process relies on a delicate dance of enzymes within plant cells, a choreography that falters as temperatures rise.
Enter Berkley Walker, an associate professor at Michigan State University, whose team is dedicated to keeping that dance in perfect step. “Nature already holds the blueprints for lots of enzymes that can handle heat,” Walker explains. “Our job is to learn from those examples and build that same resilience into the crops we depend on.”
The team’s focus is on a crucial enzyme called glycerate kinase (GLYK), which helps plants recycle carbon during photosynthesis. The hypothesis is simple yet critical: when it gets too hot, GLYK stops working, and photosynthesis fails. But why?
To find the answer, Walker’s team turned to a powerful tool: AlphaFold. Since the structure of GLYK had never been experimentally determined, they used the AI system to predict its 3D shape—not just in common plants, but also in a heat-loving algae that thrives in volcanic hot springs. By feeding these predicted structures into sophisticated molecular simulations, the researchers could watch in real-time as the enzymes flexed and twisted under rising heat.
The culprit was revealed: three flexible loops in the plant version of GLYK became unstable and wobbled out of shape at high temperatures. “AlphaFold enabled access to experimentally unavailable enzyme structures and helped us identify key sections for modification,” says Walker, noting that traditional experiments alone could never have provided such a clear, dynamic view.
Armed with this knowledge, the researchers engineered a series of hybrid enzymes. They replaced the unstable loops in the plant GLYK with more rigid counterparts borrowed from the resilient algae. The result was spectacular: one of these hybrid enzymes remained stable at temperatures up to a scorching 65°C.
“We are now looking to see if this enzyme will increase the temperature resilience of a model plant,” says Walker. The next step is to grow plants engineered to produce these hybrid enzymes and test their performance under real heat stress.
If successful, this strategy could be applied to other temperature-sensitive enzymes involved in photosynthesis, reinforcing the fundamental process of plant growth. Over time, this work could evolve into a comprehensive molecular toolkit, helping agriculture adapt a wide variety of crops to our warming world. The goal is clear: to safeguard our harvests and secure global food production for generations to come.