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Three U.S./U.K. funded projects have been awarded a total of almost $9 million in additional funding to continue research projects aimed at improving the efficiency of photosynthesis

Scientists are using novel methods to explore potential new ways to boost photosynthetic efficiency. Credit and Larger Version

May 30, 2014

Three research teams--each comprised of scientists from the United States and the United Kingdom--have been awarded a second round of funding to continue research on news ways to improve the efficiency of photosynthesis.

 

Societal benefits

The ultimate goal of this potentially high-impact research is to develop methods to increase yields of important crops that are harvested for food and sustainable biofuels. But if this research is successful, it may also be used to support reforestation efforts and efforts to increase the productivity of trees for the manufacture of wood and paper and thousands of other products that are derived from wood and chemicals extracted from trees. Another reason why photosynthesis is an important research topic: It has made the Earth hospitable for life by generating food and oxygen.

The second round of funding to the three refunded research teams is from the U.S.'s National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U.K.'s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC). This funding will total almost $9 million over three years. Each team is receiving additional funding because of the significant progress it achieved via its initial round of funding, which was also jointly awarded by NSF and the BBSRC in 2011.

 

Why and how can the efficiency of photosynthesis be increased?

A photosynthesizing organism uses sunlight and carbon dioxide to produce sugars that fuel the organism and release oxygen. But photosynthesis is a relatively inefficient process, usually capturing only about 5 percent of available energy, depending on how efficiency is measured. Nevertheless, some species of plants, algae and bacteria have evolved efficiency-boosting mechanisms that reduce energy losses or enhance carbon dioxide delivery to cells during photosynthesis.

Each of the three funded research teams is working, in a new and unique way, to improve, combine or engineer these types of efficiency-boosting mechanisms, so they may eventually be conferred on important crops that provide food or sustainable biofuels.

Scientists have long sought ways to increase the efficiency of photosynthesis but without, thus far, producing significant breakthroughs. The potentially transformational methods currently being pursued by the three funded teams were developed during an "Ideas Lab"--a workshop held in 2010 that was specially designed to generate innovative, potentially transformative research projects that might open longstanding bottlenecks to photosynthesis research.

If successful in helping to open such bottlenecks and generate ways to improve photosynthetic efficiency, any of the three re-funded research projects could provide critical support for efforts to address food and fuel challenges currently created by increasing human populations and other factors.

John Wingfield, NSF's assistant director for the Directorate of Biological Sciences, said, "Photosynthesis captures abundant and free solar energy and generates food and oxygen for the planet. Emerging technologies, like synthetic biology, are used in these potentially transformative projects to address the long-standing quest to increase efficiency of photosynthesis."

 

The three refunded projects:

1. Plug-and-play photosynthesis led by Anne Jones of Arizona State University: Some single-celled microbes capture solar energy and convert it to fuel for self-replication. Plug-and-play photosynthesis aims to distribute the capture and conversion of energy to two environments, so that each environment can be optimized for maximum efficiency for its role.

The plug-and-play team's overall goal is to capture unused energy, which would otherwise be dissipated, from a light-capturing photosynthetic cell--and transfer it to a second cell for fuel production. One way to carry out this energy transfer is to repurpose bacterial nanowires, which are tiny, electrically conductive wires that are present in some bacteria for reasons that are not yet completely understood.

These wires will be bioengineered to form an electrical bridge between light-capturing cells and fuel-producing cells--so that the wires will conduct energy from the former to the latter. To advance this project the plug-and-play team, together with other investigators, have corrected a false, but long accepted, mischaracterization of the biochemical composition of the bacterial nanowires and have thereby provided a new starting point for further study and engineering.

The research team is also working to develop another approach to intercellular energy transfer by creating new chemical pathways that would divert energy from the bacterial light-capturing cell to a designed biofuel-producing cell. The plug-and-play team has advanced this effort by developing a bioelectrochemical device that measures energy production by bacterial light-capturing cells.

 

2. Multi-Level Approaches for Generating Carbon Dioxide (MAGIC) led by John Golbeck of Pennsylvania State University: MAGIC is aimed at engineering a light-driven carbon dioxide pump that will increase the availability of carbon dioxide to an enzyme that promotes photosynthesis and will thereby increase photosynthetic efficiency.

To advance this effort, the team has, through genetic engineering, repurposed a light-sensitive protein, called halorhodopsin, which is found in a one-celled microbe called Natronomonas pharaonis; this protein helps the microbe maintain the correct chemical balance by pumping chloride into it. But the reengineered form of this protein instead pumps carbon dioxide, which is present as bicarbonate, into cells. To evaluate its pump's effectiveness, the team incorporated its light-driven bicarbonate pump into an artificial vesicle. This vesicle contains a dye whose brightness is proportional to carbon dioxide levels in the vesicle's interior--and therefore provides important information about the pump's usefulness. The team is preparing to incorporate its pump into plant cells to determine if resulting increases in the availability of carbon dioxide to plant cells will increase their growth.

 

3. Combining Algal and Plant Photosynthesis (CAPP) led by Martin Jonikas of Stanford University: Chlamydomonas, a unicellular algae, has a pyrenoid--a ball-shaped structure that helps the algae assimilate carbon to improve its photosynthetic efficiency. CAPP is aiming to, for the first time, transplant the algal pyrenoid and its associated components into higher plants--with hopes of improving these plants' photosynthetic efficiency and thus their productivity.

So far, the team has identified novel components of the pyrenoid. It has also made progress towards the development of a protein-based sensor that will be used to compare levels of bicarbonate in several cellular compartments in algae. This sensor will be used to help explain the algae's carbon concentrating mechanism and help evaluate the pyrenoid's effectiveness after it has been transplanted into higher plants.

 

Improving on nature

Jackie Hunter, BBSRC chief executive said, "Nature barely skims the surface when it comes to photosynthesis and making use of the sun's energy. There is huge room for improvement and these research projects are taking steps to help us to unlock hidden potential that could benefit us all. Using the sun's energy more efficiently means a greater potential to produce fuel, food, fibers, useful chemicals and much more."

Gregory Warr, an NSF program director, said, "These projects, if successful, could transform the way we generate the fuel, food, clothing and shelter that plants and microbes provide to us."

-NSF-

Media Contacts Lily Whiteman, National Science Foundation, (703) 292-8310,

lwhitema@nsf.gov
Robert Dawson, U.K. Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, 01793 413 204, Robert.Dawson@bbsrc.ac.uk

Program Contacts Gregory Warr, National Science Foundation, (703) 292-8284,

 gwarr@nsf.gov
Kent Dearn Chapman, National Science Foundation, (703) 292-7879,

 kchapman@nsf.gov

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering. In fiscal year (FY) 2014, its budget is $7.2 billion. NSF funds reach all 50 states through grants to nearly 2,000 colleges, universities and other institutions. Each year, NSF receives about 50,000 competitive requests for funding, and makes about 11,500 new funding awards. NSF also awards about $593 million in professional and service contracts yearly.

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Plug-and-play will separate processes into two environments connected by conductive nanowires.
Credit and Larger Version

The MAGIC team's pump will transport into cells bicarbonate (HCO3-) that will be converted into CO2.
Credit and Larger Version

CAPP: An algea pyrenoid appears blue and its chloroplast, a photosynthesizing unit, appears green.
Credit and Larger Versión
The National Science Foundation (NSF)
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
ayabaca@gmail.com
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Science: Tropical Reefs' Surviving Environmental Stresses: Corals' Choice of Symbiotic Algae May Hold the Key

Hi My Friends: A VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG., Corals that host fewer species of algae are less sensitive to disturbances.

Coral known as Acropora on a fringing reef at NSF's Moorea Coral Reef LTER site.
Credit: Hollie Putnam 

 The Moorea LTER site is also home to extensive lagoon reefs, pictured here.
Credit: Hollie Putnam

 In Tahitian waters, the coral Porites dominates the shallows: Shown here with Christmas tree worm.

Credit: Hollie Putnam

 Porites coral bommie; bommies are outcrops of coral or rock on a reef.
Credit: Hollie Putnam

 Head of Pocillopora coral with small fish in a lagoon at the Moorea LTER site.
Credit: Hollie Putnam

 Close-up view of Pocillopora coral with small fish darting in and out of the reef.
Credit: Hollie Putnam

The following is part ten in a series on the National Science Foundation's Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network. Visit parts one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight and nine in this series.

Symbiodinium, it's technically called, but more popularly it's known as zooxanthellae.

Either way, these microscopic algae that live within a coral's tissues hold the key to a tropical reef's ability to withstand environmental stresses.

The effects on tropical corals of global warming, ocean acidification, pollution, coastal development and overfishing may all come down to how choosy the corals are about their algae tenants.

Reef corals are the sum of an animal and the single-celled algae that live inside its tissues. The animal is called the host and the algae are called endosymbionts.

It's a mutually beneficial arrangement. The corals provide the algae with protection in sunlit, shallow seas. The algae produce large amounts of energy through photosynthesis, which the corals use to survive and to build their skeletons.

The stability of this symbiotic relationship is critical to corals' survival. When corals lose their algae, they bleach out and often die.

Researchers at the University of Hawaii and other institutions have found that the more flexible corals are about their algal residents, the more sensitive they are to environmental changes.

"It's exactly the opposite of what we expected," says Hollie Putnam of the University of Hawaii and lead author of a paper published this week in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

"The finding was surprising; we thought that corals exploited the ability to host a variety of Symbiodinium to adapt to climate change."

But more is not always better, say Putnam and co-authors Michael Stat of the University of Western Australia and the Australian Institute of Marine Science; Xavier Pochon of the Cawthron Institute in Nelson, New Zealand; and Ruth Gates of the University of Hawaii.

"The relationship of corals to the algae that live within them is fundamental to their biology," says David Garrison, program director in the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Division of Ocean Sciences, which funded the research.

"This study gives us an important new understanding of how corals are likely to respond to the stresses of environmental change."

The research was conducted at NSF's Moorea Coral Reef Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site, one of 26 such NSF LTER sites around the globe in ecosystems from deserts to freshwater lakes, and from forests to grasslands.

Putnam and colleagues took samples from 34 species of corals at the Moorea LTER site. By analyzing the DNA from the algae in the samples, they identified the specific species of Symbiodinium.

The findings reveal that some corals host a single Symbiodinium species. Others host many.

"We were able to link, for the first time, patterns in environmental performance of corals to the number and variety of endosymbionts they host," says Putnam.

The patterns show that corals termed generalists--those that are flexible in their choice of algae residents--are more environmentally sensitive.

In contrast, environmentally resistant corals--termed specifists--associate with only one or a few specific species of Symbiodinium.

Generalists such as Acropora and Pocillopora are some of the most environmentally sensitive corals.

Conversely, specifists such as Porites harbor few Symbiodinium species and are environmentally resistant.

"Coral reefs are economically and ecologically important, providing homes for a high diversity of organisms and are necessary for food supplies, recreation and tourism in many countries," says Gates.

"The better we understand how corals respond to stress, the more capable we will be of forecasting and managing future reef communities."

It's likely that the reefs of tomorrow, say Putnam and co-authors, will be shaped by the coral-Symbiodinium assemblages of today.

In the roulette of coral species on a tropical reef, Porites may be the clear winner.

--	Cheryl Dybas, NSF (703) 292-7734 cdybas@nsf.gov

Related Websites
NSF Moorea Coral Reef LTER Site: http://mcr.lternet.edu/
NSF LTER Network: http://www.lternet.edu
Trouble in Paradise: Ocean Acidification This Way Comes: 

http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=122642&org=NSF

The National Science Foundation (NSF).

Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui

ayabaca@gmail.com

ayabaca@hotmail.com

ayabaca@yahoo.com

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