Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2006. Heat sensitivity of Rubisco activase(s) confers a major limitation on leaf photosynthesis at moderately high temperature in Arabidopsis. To overcome this limitation, a thermostable activase for Arabidopsis was generated by engineering the more thermostable tobacco activase with an Arabidopsis Rubisco recognition domain. The resulting chimeric activase displayed an improved thermostability, activated Arabidopsis Rubisco and maintained Rubisco activation state at moderately high temperature in vitro. Transgenic Arabidopsis plants expressing the chimeric activase were created, allowing for further characterization. U of I Only Restricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETDs