The research in my laboratory reflects the biodiversity of oxygenic photosynthetic organisms and my long-term interests in the biochemistry and molecular biology of photosynthesis. This process is responsible for the production of atmospheric oxygen and indirectly almost all of the biomass on the planet. The catalytic centre for the oxidation of water is located on the lumenal side of the thylakoid membrane. A number of hydrophilic proteins and several plastid-encoded transmembrane proteins contribute hydrophilic domains to this part of the photosystem.
Prokaryotes utilise two-component regulatory systems in the detection of environmental signals.
These systems typically consist of a sensor protein and a response-regulator protein. Detection of the environmental signal by the sensor domain induces autophosphorylation of a specific histidine. The phosphoryl group is then transferred to a specific aspartate residue in the response regulator. Phosphorylation of the response regulator leads to an output signal such as transcriptional activation or protein-protein interactions associated with signal transduction pathways. The biochemical basis for the limitation of photosynthesis in shade-requiring Asian medicinal crops Asian medicinal herbs represent potentially important crops for New Zealand.