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.
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.
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.
Events
Devastating fungal diseases threaten global food security and plant and animal populations, highlighting the need for rapid and accurate identification of fungal pathogens.
Wheat is an important food supplier contributing to about one-fifth of worldwide daily caloric and protein needs.
I have developed a novel E.coli based directed evolution system to evolve Ribulose-1,5 -bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (Rubisco), the rate-limiting enzyme in the Calvin Cycle of photosynthetic organisms.
Accurate estimation of gas exchange parameters has always been a fundamental aim of plant physiologists; from the more general assumptions and calculations presented by Moss and Rawlins (1963) up to the widely used model introduced by von Caemmerer and Farquhar (1981).
This thesis aimed to resolve how cyanobacterial Rubisco interacts with its binding partners both in vivo and in vitro.
Fungal pathogens are a major constraint to global crop production, hence plant genes encoding pathogen resistance are important tools for combating disease.