Unravelling the light controlling switch in Cyanobacteria

解开蓝细菌中的光控制开关

基本信息

批准号：
BB/Y006399/1
负责人：
Aneika Corrine Leney
金额：
$ 65.35万
依托单位：
University of Birmingham
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Research Grant
财政年份：
2024
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2024 至无数据
项目状态：
未结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=BB%2FY006399%2F1
关键词：
Unravelling light controlling switch Cyanobacteria

项目摘要

Carbon dioxide levels are increasing rapidly causing global warming. Despite the current efforts in place, scientists predict carbon dioxide levels will continue to rise and innovative methods to sequester carbon are needed. Approximately 2 billion years ago, microorganisms called cyanobacteria removed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere causing the great oxygen event that enabled life as we know it to be created. Can cyanobacteria again solve the crisis we are seeing today?Cyanobacteria capture a broad spectrum of light during photosynthesis enabling them to sequester carbon more effectively compared with plants or trees. Yet, energy transfer during photosynthesis does not occur effectively all the time. By applying an innovative, state-of-the-art analytical approach, we have for the first time identified a mechanism within cyanobacteria's light-harvesting machinery that the organism uses to limit energy transfer during photosynthesis, thus rendering photosynthesis inefficient. Using an inter-disciplinary team of molecular biologists, structural biologists, analytical chemists and experts in photophysics, this proposal seeks to determine the precise role of this newly found molecular switch within cyanobacteria and use this knowledge to engineer cyanobacteria with enhanced photosynthetic properties for use by the renewable energy industries to enhance carbon sequestration.

二氧化碳含量迅速增加，导致全球变暖。尽管目前做出了努力，但科学家预测二氧化碳水平将继续上升，需要创新的方法来封存碳。大约20亿年前，被称为蓝藻的微生物从大气中清除了二氧化碳，引发了巨大的氧气事件，从而使我们所知的生命得以诞生。蓝藻能否再次解决我们今天所面临的危机？蓝藻在光合作用过程中捕获广谱光，使其能够比植物或树木更有效地固碳。然而，光合作用过程中的能量传递并不是一直有效地发生。通过应用创新、最先进的分析方法，我们首次确定了蓝藻光捕获机制中的一种机制，该生物体利用该机制来限制光合作用过程中的能量转移，从而导致光合作用效率低下。该提案利用由分子生物学家、结构生物学家、分析化学家和光物理学专家组成的跨学科团队，旨在确定这种新发现的分子开关在蓝藻中的精确作用，并利用这些知识来设计具有增强光合特性的蓝藻，以供人类使用。可再生能源产业加强碳固存。