Crassulacean acid metabolism

Crassulacean acid metabolism, also known as CAM photosynthesis, is a carbon fixation pathway that evolved in some plants as an adaptation to arid conditions^[1] that allows a plant to photosynthesize during the day, but only exchange gases at night. In a plant using full CAM, the stomata in the leaves remain shut during the day to reduce evapotranspiration, but they open at night to collect carbon dioxide (CO₂) and allow it to diffuse into the mesophyll cells. The CO₂ is stored as four-carbon malic acid in vacuoles at night, and then in the daytime, the malate is transported to chloroplasts where it is converted back to CO₂, which is then used during photosynthesis. The pre-collected CO₂ is concentrated around the enzyme RuBisCO, increasing photosynthetic efficiency. This mechanism of acid metabolism was first discovered in plants of the family Crassulaceae.