Biogeochemistry of phytoplankton RuBisCO in the ocean

Ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate oxygenase/carboxylase (RuBisCO) is the most abundant enzyme on Earth, playing a key role in carbon fixation during oxygenic photosynthesis. Form I RuBisCO is found in marine photosynthesizers and land plants. There are different Types of Form I RuBisCO, which vary in amino acid length and composition. The objective of this research was to determine the amounts of elemental resources (C, N, S) associated with the different Types of RuBisCO found in marine phytoplankton. This was achieved by converting published protein sequence data (from UniProt KB) into elemental data for the large and small subunit proteins in RuBisCO. The results of these calculations are presented in this database for the large subunit (L), small subunit (S), and L8S8 holoenzyme of RuBisCO for marine photosynthetic organisms and representative land plants.