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
Accelerated gene evolution is a hallmark of pathogen adaptation and is crucial to enable host-range expansions and host-jumps
The emergence and implementation of Cas endonuclease technology has undoubtedly taken plant research and biotechnology to a higher level.
Irrespective of species, plant roots have remarkably similar patterning, and thus, many cell types are considered functionally homologous across species.
PS Webinar Series: Technological convergence for Planetary Health - Precision Landscape Regeneration
Agriculture and ecosystems are tipping toward collapse due to land use and climate extremes. Irreversible feedbacks in the land system can lock in food insecurity, biodiversity loss and a hot house world.
In order to sustain and improve cotton (Gossypium hirsutum) production in future climates with increasingly hot mean annual temperatures and more frequent and extreme heatwaves, developing climate-adapted cotton cultivars is required.
Many photosynthetic organisms employ a CO2 concentrating mechanism (CCM) to increase the rate of CO2 fixation via the Calvin cycle. CCMs catalyze ≈50% of global photosynthesis, yet it remains unclear which genes and proteins are necessary for a CCM to function.