Anne Steensma

Date: April 23, 2024

Time: 12:00 pm

In-person location: 168 PLB

Zoom: https://bit.ly/prltuesnoon
Meeting ID: 957 9659 6975
Passcode: 420205

Speaker: Anne Steensma

Lab: Walker lab

Title: How can Cyanidioschyzon merolae concentrate carbon? Ongoing studies of carbon assimilation in an extremophilic microalga

Abstract: To learn more about how photosynthetic organisms overcome environmental challenges, we study Cyanidioschyzon merolae, a microalga isolated from geothermal springs. C. merolae achieves its environmental resilience in part by increasing its photosynthetic efficiency through a carbon-concentrating mechanism (CCM). The presence of a CCM in C. merolae suggests an unusual mechanism for carbon concentration, as C. merolae appears to lack structures and abilities typically associated with a CCM. To explore how C. merolae’s CCM could function, we used mathematical modelling to explore a hypothetical CCM and associated parameter space. This modelling pointed to cell features that are likely important for the CCM in this species, and I will discuss ongoing and future work to characterize these features experimentally.