Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Paper published in PNAS

A new paper published in PNAS this week provides evidence for chloroplast pyrenoid formation in the green alga Chlamydamonas. The pyrenoid, once thought to be a starch-storage granule, is now recognized to be the centre of a carbon concentrating mechanism which turbocharges photosynthesis.

Moritz Meyer, Maddie Mitchell and Howard Griffiths, in collaboration with colleagues in UNL Nebraska, have shown that modifications to the primary carboxylase, Rubisco, are responsible for pyrenoid formation. Specifically, it seems that two regions of the small subunit, the alpha helices, interact to allow Rubisco to aggregate into the pyrenoid, which also regulates CCM activity.

Read online

Monday, October 15, 2012

BBSRC Doctoral Training Partnership Programme

The BBSRC Doctoral Training Partnership Programme started on 1st October 2012. The programme, developed following an award of £5.6M from the BBSRC, will have at least 60 students over the next three years. The programme, which sits in the Graduate School of Life Sciences, involves a number of partners (Babraham Institute, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, European Bioinformatics Institute, National Institute for Agricultural Botany and the Animal Health Trust) as well as 15 Departments and Institutes in the Schools of Biological Sciences, Clinical Medicine, Physical Sciences and Technology.

The Programme's Director, Professor Sir David Baulcombe, hosted a welcome dinner at St Catharine's College on 3rd October 2012.