Life · life
Rubisco
Enzyme · Mg, C, O
- Kind
- Enzyme
Function
Fixes carbon dioxide onto a five-carbon sugar, the first step of turning air into biomass. It is also slow, and it confuses oxygen for carbon dioxide often enough that plants run a whole salvage pathway to clean up after it.
Numbers
Three or so carbon dioxide molecules a second per site — dismal for an enzyme, and compensated for by sheer quantity. It is thought to be the most abundant protein on Earth.
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