Project description:Heterologous expression of a water soluble chlorophyll protein from Brassica oleracea var. gemmifera in the phototrophic purple bacterium Rhodobacter sphaeroides was verified by bottom-up proteomic analysis.
Project description:Gemmatimonas phototrophica is the only phototrophic member of the recently discovered bacterial phylum Gemmatimonadetes. It was isolated from a freshwater lake in the Gobi desert and first described in 2014. So far, Gemmatimonas phototrophica is the only bacterium to have received a complete set of photosynthesis-related genes by horizontal gene transfer from an ancient phototrophic species from the phylum Proteobacteria. This organism illustrates the possibility for engineering phototrophic capability in a non-phototrophic organism and is therefore of great interest to the field of synthetic biology. The structure of the photosynthetic reaction center-light harvesting 1 complex is under investigation by cryo-EM. Proteomic analysis verified the identities of the expected protein components of this complex and, additionally revealed polypeptides that were previously undiscovered and could be mapped to the cryo-EM images.
Project description:Transcriptional profiling of Rhodopseudomonas palustris (R. palustris) comparing cbbT1 over-expressing strain with cbbT2 over-expressing strain. Goal was to discriminate the molecular mechanisms between transketolase I (cbbT1) and transketolase II (cbbT2). R.palustris is a purple non-sulfur anoxygenic phototrophic bacterium and transketolase (cbbT1 and cbbT2) is a key enzyme involved in the CBB cycle. Here, we investogated the functions of transketolase isoforms I (cbbT1) and II (cbbT2) in R. palustris through transcriptional profiling and other functional assays.