A simple and rapid method to determine the CO2/O2 specificity factor for Rubisco

A simple and rapid new method is presented to determine the CO2/O-2 specificity factor for ribulose-1, 5-bisphosphate (RuBP) carboxylase/oxygenase (Rubisco). In principle, the quantitative formula, which intrinsically resulted in error or enormous error in all reported methods, was improved to circumvent the problem. In practice, the complicated procedure with radiolabelling and chromatographic separation of 3-phosphoglycerate and 2-phosphoglycolate was substituted by one-step procedure without radiolabelling and chromatographic separation to decrease the random error. The effects of pH, temperature and ionic strength on accuracy of the data and the reliability of the calculation of the CO2/O-2 specificity factor are also discussed.