Flexi Says: Plants have evolved three pathways for carbon fixation. The most common pathway combines one molecule of CO2 with a 5-carbon sugar called ribulose biphosphate (RuBP). The enzyme which catalyzes this reaction, ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase oxygenase (nicknamed RuBisCo), is the most abundant enzyme on earth! The resulting 6-carbon molecule is unstable, so it immediately splits into two much more stable 3-carbon phosphoglycerate molecules. The 3 carbons in the first stable molecule of this pathway give this largest group of plants the name “C-3.”
