Photosynthesis At 1000 ppm CO in measuring air, both the C3 and C4 plants had similar leaf photosynthetic rates around 60 μmol CO·m·s indicating the suppression of photorespiration in C3 plants. There are three main factors affecting photosynthesis and several corollary factors. The three main are: Total photosynthesis is limited by a range of environmental factors. These include the amount of light available, the amount of leaf area a plant has to capture light (shading by other plants is a major limitation of photosynthesis), rate at which carbon dioxide can be supplied to the chloroplasts to support photosynthesis, the availability of
Fractionation of carbon isotopes in oxygenic photosynthesis These cells are part of the characteristic "kranz leaf anatomy", which spatially separates photosynthetic cell-types in a concentric arrangement to accumulate CO near RuBisCO. These chemical and anatomical mechanisms improve the ability of RuBisCO to fix carbon, rather than perform its wasteful oxygenase activity. The RuBisCO oxygenase activity, called photorespiration, causes the RuBP substrate to be lost to oxidation, and consumes energy in doing so. The adaptations of C4 plants provide an advantage over the C3 pathway, which loses efficiency due to photorespiration. The ratio of photorespiration to photosynthesis in a plant varies with environmental conditions, since decreased CO and