Today, photosynthesis occurs on a vast scale, so much so that just in a few hours the amount of organic material produced globally is equal to the total weight of the human population of the world. In this project, we study photosynthetic energy conversion on the molecular level using a combination of biochemical, biophysical and molecular genetical techniques. The ultimate goal is to obtain basic structural and functional information about the photosynthetic machinery to pave the way for creation of devices for artifical photosynthesis and for the development of more efficient and stress-tolerant plants.
Light can be both good and bad for photosynthesis.
Even though light is the ultimate substrate for photosynthesis, light of too high intensity can be harmful to the plant. Photoinactivation does not only lead to impairment of electron transport but also to photodamage and degradation of the important D1-protein of the photosystem II reaction centre. Photosynthesis is repaired by synthesis of new copies of the D1-protein and assembly of new functional photosystem II complexes. We are trying to identify the proteases involved in this process. Several of the proteins of photosystem II and its light-harvesting chlorophyll binding proteins are phosphorylated.