HFSP grant awarded to Ralph Bock for research about the birth and death of chloroplasts
Bock and his collaboration partner Ziv Reich from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel receive a total of 577.000 € from the Human Frontier Science Program. They will combine their expertise to elucidate how the photosynthetic apparatus is assembled and degraded.
Life on Earth depends on photosynthesis, yet little is known about how plants build up and recycle their photosynthetic apparatus. Photosynthesis itself takes place in the plants’ chloroplasts, precisely in the thylakoid membranes, where light energy is converted into chemical energy. Exactly how these energy-transducing membranes form, mature and degrade remains to be elusive. “These processes are extremely complex and are essential to the plants’ growth, survival and reproduction, yet nobody really knows what is going on,” Bock summarizes the current level of knowledge.
The newly formed collaboration is going to apply a systems biology approach, integrating transcriptomic, proteomic and metabolomics data provided by the lab of Ralph Bock with information about the thylakoid architecture obtained via high-resolution 3D electron microscopy and other imaging techniques in the lab of Ziv Reich.
“We believe that our project will bring our understanding of the processes behind thylakoid formation and degradation to a new level,” Ralph Bock explains. For the first time the scientists will use plant cultures grown under the exact same regimes for all of their experiments, which will enable them to directly correlate their data. By the end of the funding period they hope to have established a much needed database compiling all sorts of information including potential molecular targets influencing thylakoid development.
In addition to being of fundamental scientific interest, the processes of thylakoid formation bears an immediate agricultural relevance as it directly impacts biomass production, plant longevity, flowering, fruiting and seed production. “Our results will be of great importance to scientists as well as breeders who wish to improve photosynthesis,” Bock concludes.
About the Human Frontier Science Program
The Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) is an international program of research support, funding frontier research on the complex mechanisms of living organisms. Research is funded at all levels of biological complexity from biomolecules to the interactions between organisms. Their Research Grants enable scientists from different countries to collaborate on focused innovative projects that are expected to open new fields of investigation. This year the HFSP received over 700 applications, 23 of which were selected for funding.
More information about the awardees of 2013 can be found of the website of the Human Frontier Science Program.
[CSt]