A map of the rubisco biochemical landscape

Rubisco is the primary CO₂ fixing enzyme of the biosphere yet has slow kinetics. The roles of evolution and chemical mechanism in constraining the sequence landscape of rubisco remain debated. In order to map sequence to function, we developed a massively parallel assay for rubisco using an engineered E. coli where enzyme function is coupled to growth. By assaying >99% of single amino acid mutants across CO₂ concentrations, we inferred enzyme velocity and CO₂ affinity for thousands of substitutions. We identified many highly conserved positions that tolerate mutation and rare mutations that improve CO₂ affinity. These data suggest that non-trivial kinetic improvements are readily accessible and provide a comprehensive sequence-to-function mapping for enzyme engineering efforts.