Plants reap energy from the sun using two photosynthesis pathways, C3 and C4. A new study suggests that water availability drove the expansion of C4 species, which may help to explain how different ...

The C4-photosynthetic carbon cycle is an elaborated addition to the classical C3-photosynthetic pathway, which improves solar conversion efficiency. The key enzyme in this pathway, phosphoenolpyruvate ...

C4 photosynthesis represents a striking example of convergent evolution, where multiple plant lineages have independently modified an ancestral C3 pathway to enhance carbon fixation efficiency. This ...

In the dramatically changing conditions of ancient Earth, organisms had to evolve new strategies to keep up. From the mid-Oligocene, roughly 30 million years ago, to the mid-to-late Miocene, about 5 ...