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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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Prof. Sabeeha Merchant, UCLA
Trace metal economy in Chlamydomonas
School Colloquium
Inorganic trace elements can limit the abundance of photosynthetic organisms because of their role as cofactors in enzymes. In Chlamydomonas cultures placed in a situation of poor copper nutrition, copper is preferentially allocated to cytochrome oxidase over ferroxidase and plastocyanin. In a pathway controlled by a copper-sensing transcription factor, plastocyanin, functionally replaced by cytochrome c6, is degraded and its copper cofactor is recycled for continued synthesis of cytochrome oxidase, an essential enzyme in respiration. RNA-seq analysis of the Chlamydomonas transcriptome in batch culture of copper-deficient cells identifies a candidate protease for plastocyanin degradation. The co-occurrence of genetic information for plastocyanin as well as functionally-equivalent cytochrome c6 in algal and cyanobacterial genomes suggests a role for plastocyanin in copper sequestration, which may provide a competitive advantage in copper-deplete environments.
For more information contact Prof. Christoph Fahrni (404-385-1164).
