时间：2012年6月26日 星期二 上午9：30

地点：水生所重点实验室楼8楼学术报告厅

报告专家： Dr. Donald A. Bryant

报告题目： The phylum Chlorobi: unexpected diversity among green bacteria revealed by genomics, metagenomics, and metatranscriptomics.

专家简介：

Dr. DONALD A. BRYANT

Ernest C. Pollard Professor of Biotechnology

Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA

Research Professor, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry,

Montana State University, Bozeman, MT

Photosynthesis, the chlorophyll-dependent conversion of light energy into chemical energy with the ensuing reduction of carbon dioxide to biomass, is arguably the most important biological process on Earth. Among prokaryotes, the ability to use chlorophylls to capture and convert light into biochemical energy was until very recently believed to occur in members of only five eubacterial kingdoms: Cyanobacteria, Proteobacteria, Chlorobi, Chloroflexi, and Firmicutes. Dr. Bryant’s team recently discovered a previously unknown chlorophototroph, Candidatus Chloracidobacterium thermophilum, which is a member of the poorly characterized kingdom Acidobacteria. Current research in his laboratory focuses on a wide variety of topics in photosynthesis in bacteria, including structure-function relationships of proteins, biogenesis of the photosynthetic apparatus, gene regulation, and photosynthetic physiology. Principally, two model organisms are studied in Dr. Bryant’s lab, the unicellular, marine cyanobacterium Synechococcus sp. PCC 7002 and the moderately thermophilic green sulfur Chlorobaculum tepidum (Chlorobi), which can easily be manipulated genetically. Because Cyanobacteria perform oxygen-evolving photosynthesis but characterized Chlorobi are obligately photoautotrophic anaerobes, these two organisms provide an interesting contrast in physiology and metabolism.