Congratulations to former lab undergrad and research technician Mimi Broderson on her Photosynthesis Research paper using imaging and membrane fractionation to investigate thylakoid unstacking in high light! The paper is part of a special issue dedicated to the memory of our dear colleague and friend, Ken Sauer.
Lab News
Congratulations, Thien, on receiving your Ph.D.!
Congratulations to our graduate student Thien Crisanto for completing her Ph.D.! Her dissertation focused on understanding how and where the LHCX1 protein functions in NPQ in a model photosynthetic stramenopile, Nannochloropsis oceanica.
Metabolomic, photoprotective, and photosynthetic acclimatory responses to post-flowering drought in sorghum
Former postdoc Chris Baker led this field study of drought-stressed sorghum at UC’s Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center in the Central Valley. It was a great team effort! Chris’ Plant Direct paper shows how photosynthesis and photoprotection respond in a drought-tolerant crop.
Kinetics of the xanthophyll cycle and its role in the photoprotective memory and response
Ph.D. student Thien Crisanto contributed to this Nature Communications paper by Audrey Short and Tom Fay that uses modeling of the xanthophyll cycle to predict the qE and qZ components of NPQ in Nannochloropsis oceanica. Check out the LBNL news story here!
Time-resolved systems analysis of the induction of high photosynthetic capacity in Arabidopsis during acclimation to high light
Former postdoc Chris Baker’s recent paper in New Phytologist provides new insights into how plants adjust Pmax during acclimation to high light – another way to deal with excess light is to use more of it in photosynthesis!
Chlorophyll to zeaxanthin energy transfer in non-photochemical quenching: an exciton annihilation-free transient absorption study
Through our longstanding interdisciplinary collaboration with Graham Fleming’s lab in the Department of Chemistry, we used a new annihilation-free transient absorption approach with thylakoids from N. benthamiana CRISPR mutants to show that excitation energy transfer (EET) quenching by zeaxanthin is indeed associated with qE. Preprint is available on bioRxiv.
Congratulations, Dhruv, on receiving a prestigious AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellowship!
Former graduate student Dhruv Patel-Tupper is now working at the Foreign Ag Service of the USDA to advance international trade policy at the intersection of agriculture and climate change.
Armen is staying in the lab as a Ph.D. student!
First-year PMB graduate student and former Niyogi lab tech Armen Kelikian has decided to stay in the lab for his thesis research. Woot!
A proposed function for the red body of Nannochloropsis in the formation of the recalcitrant cell wall polymer, algaenan
Former Ph.D. student Chris Gee’s manuscript on the super-interesting cell biology of algaenan is up on bioRxiv.
NTRC regulates CP12 to activate Calvin–Benson cycle during cold acclimation
Former postdocs José García-Cerdán and Rachel Dent contributed to this PNAS paper showing a function of NTRC in regulation of CP12.