## Calvin on the Calvin cycle

In looking for the reactions one useful source of information is the following. The carbon atoms in a given substance involved in the cycle are not equivalent to each other. By suitable experiments it can be decided which are the first carbon atoms to become radioactive. For instance, a compound produced in relatively large amounts right at the beginning of the process is phosphoglyceric acid (PGA) and it is found that the carbon in the carboxyl group is the one which becomes radioactive first. The other two carbons become radioactive at a common later time. This type of information provides suggestions for possible reaction mechanisms. Another type of input is obtained by simply counting carbon atoms in potential reactions. For instance, if the three-carbon compound PGA is to be produced from a precursor by the addition of carbon dioxide then the simple arthmetic relation $3=1+2$ indicates that there might be a precursor molecule with two carbons. However this molecule was never found and it turns out that the relevant arithmetic is $2\times 3=1+5$. The reaction produces two molecules of PGA from a precursor with five carbon atoms, ribulose bisphosphate (RuBP). Combining the information about the order in which the carbon atoms were incorporated with the arithmetic considerations allowed a large part of the network to be reconstructed. Nevertheless the nature of one key step, that in which carbon dioxide is incorporated into PGA remained unclear. Further progress required a different type of experiment.