Project Details
Projekt
Photorespiration-centred metabolic modelling: reconstruction and structural analysis of the network of primary metabolism in cyanobacteria, comparison to eukaryotic energy and central carbon metabolism, metabolic engineering approach for optimisation of C-fixation
Applicant
Professor Dr. Olaf Wolkenhauer
Subject Area
Plant Biochemistry and Biophysics
Term
from 2009 to 2013
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 91564084
The purpose of the cooperation between modelers and experimentalists in this project is to apply computational approaches to improve our understanding of photosynthetic carbon metabolism, particularly its efficiency and regulation in connection with the photorespiratory pathway. We can build both on our previous study of the Calvin-Benson cycle and adjacent pathways as well as on the results coming from our collaboration with Hagemann group. This work focuses on the redirection of carbon flux after changing from high to low CO2 in the case of Synechococcus elongatus PCC 7942 and Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803. The next funding period would concentrate on identifying the rate-limiting steps in the transport-chain and critical metabolic regulators in cyanobacteria and C3 plants (and optionally in C4 plants) which will require multi-level modeling approach, integrating metabolic and transcriptomic data, photorespiratory knockout mutants, labelling experiments and overexpression. The modeling efforts will start with non-compartmental representation which will identify possible rate limitations in the transporter-chain among compartments and separated pools of metabolites. Finally, comparison between cyanobacterial photorespiratory mutant without the carboxysome, C3 and C4 carbon fixations can provide new insight into efficiency of the carbon metabolism.
DFG Programme
Research Units
