Improving Rubisco's carbondioxide-fixing capability by genetic engineering is unlikely to enhance crop productivity significantly on its own (R. J. Ellis Nature 463, 164-165; 2010). Crop yield does not depend on a single enzymatic reaction: it is the result of a population-scale process that is the outcome of a series of source and sink regulated developmental and growth processes (R. K. M. Hay and J. R. Porter The Physiology of Crop Yield Wiley-Blackwell, 2006). The success of modern, highyielding crop varieties is mainly down to their larger leaves, which intercept more light and provide more shade against competitive weeds. The management and agronomy of crops are typically more important as drivers of yield than genetics. They also make crop production more sustainable. Crop physiologists have appreciated for a long time that to increase growth, increases in photosynthetic rate are accompanied by higher respiration costs because more growth substrates and more proteins have to be constructed. The idea that respiration and 876

To a large extent, the pursuit of science takes place in universities. In this essay, I ask the following questions. Supposing there were no universities, and that all the knowledge mankind has ever collected and generated is somehow accessible, would we invent universities to make this knowledge available to address the problems humanity faces? What should those universities perform, and what role would science play in such universities? To look for answers to those questions, I consider the nature of the problems dealt with by science, the knowledge needed to address those problems, the gap between the two, the need for interdisciplinarity and the need to educate the leaders of the future, and finally, the boundaries of scientific knowledge.

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