News & events
News
Scientists at the Australian Research Council (ARC) ARC Centre of Excellence for Translational Photosynthesis (CoETP) have found that some plants have ten times more communication channels inside their leaves than other plants, which they think is a crucial factor in determining photosynthetic efficiency.
ANU congratulates distinguished scientist and ANU Professor Graham Farquhar AO for being named the 2018 Senior Australian of the Year.
Photosynthesis is an essential biological process that depends on the activity of the enzyme Rubisco which catalyses carbon fixation. Rubisco is slow, inefficient and cannot accurately distinguish between CO2 and O2. ANU researchers have been trying to improve the efficiency of Rubisco in crop plants.
The investigations into carbon fixation and gas exchange by RSBS researchers were essential to the understanding of photosynthesis, and the development of new processes to increase the efficiency of the photosynthetic process in agriculture.
Legumes are an interesting plant to study due to their symbiotic relationship with nitrogen fixing bacteria called Rhizobia, which are housed within specialised root structures called nodules. The work of ANU researchers has been very important for our understanding of symbiosis, nodule formation and nitrogen fixation.
Carboxysomes are polyhedral protein micro-compartments in cyanobacteria which concentrate CO2 and increase the efficiency of carbon fixation. In 1993, RSBS researchers Dean Price, Murray Badger and Susan Howitt determined the genetic sequence encoding for the proteins that form the protein shell of a carboxysome.
Events
With the onset of climate change we have seen ongoing increases in mean global temperature, including a rise in night temperatures that has outpaced the rate of daytime warming.
I began my research career investigating the relationship between photosynthesis and nitrogen in the leaves of wheat, mainly out of curiosity.
RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) are critical regulators of gene expression, but have been poorly studied relative to other classes of gene regulators.
The emergence of widely virulent Puccinia graminis f. sp. tritici (Pgt) races over the past two decades has motivated global efforts to identify effective stem rust (Sr) resistance genes.
Plant resistance proteins act as immune receptors to recognise pathogen effectors and activate defense.
As the intermediary between DNA and proteins, RNA has a major regulatory role in gene expression.