There are currently intense efforts devoted to understand plant respiration (from genes toecosystems) and its regulatory mechanisms; Thus, in addition tomanipulating photosynthesis to increase plant biomass production, minimization ofrespiratory loss should be considered in plant science and engineering.

This book offers a genome-level understanding of the structure, function, and evolution of photosynthetic systems, and reviews advantages accrued from the development of phyletically diverse gene sequences for major components of the photosynthetic apparatus.