Energy transduction and genome function – an evolutionary synthesis

Dr Nick Lane is a biochemist and writer. He holds the first Provost's Venture Research Fellowship in the Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment at University College London. His research is on the role of bioenergetics in the origin of life and the major transitions of evolution. Dr Lane was a founding member of the UCL Consortium for Mitochondrial Research, and is leading the UCL Research Frontiers Origins of Life programme. He is the author of three acclaimed books on evolutionary biochemistry, the latest of which, Life Ascending, won the 2010 Royal Society Prize for Science Books.

Bill Martin received his undergraduate degree in Biology at the University of Hannover in 1985 and completed his PhD in Genetics with Heinz Saedler at the Max Planck Institute for Breeding Research in Cologne in 1988. He pursued postdoctoral research with Rüdiger Cerff at the University of Braunschweig on the origins and evolution of eukaryotes and their bioenergetic organelles (chloroplasts and mitochondria). In 1999 he accepted the position of full professor at the University of Düsseldorf. His biochemical work focusses on energy metabolism in eukaryotic anaerobes and the role of hydrogenosomes — hydrogen-producing forms of mitochondria — therein. His genome evolutionary work focusses on non-treelike evolutionary processes such as gene transfers from organelles to the nucleus (endosymbiotic gene transfer) and lateral gene transfer among prokaryotes, the study of which incorporates networks to recover the vertical and the horizontal components of genome evolution.

Emeritus Professor was Boyd Baxter Professor of Biology at the University of Dundee from 1995 until his official retirement in 2008. He obtained a BA in Botany in 1963 and a PhD in Botany (Plant Biophysics) in 1967 from the University of Cambridge (UK), and moved to the University of Dundee in 1971 where he became a full Professor in 1980. His primary research interests are in the ecophysiology and biogeochemistry of marine and terrestrial primary producers, with related studies on palaeoecology and some forays into astrobiology. A continuing interest is the evolution of photosynthesis in relation to environmental changes..  He has published two monographs (one co-authored) on photosynthesis and other aspects of bioenergetics, and has published over 330 peer-reviewed publications, as well as numerous book chapters; and his associate editor for six journals. His Hirsch index is 63. Professor Raven was elected a Fellow of the Royal Societies of Edinburgh in 1981 and a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1990.

John F. Allen is Professor of Biochemistry at Queen Mary, University of London. A native of Newport, Monmouthshire, Allen obtained his BSc and PhD (with D. O. Hall) from King's College, University of London. Allen pursued postdoctoral research in Oxford, in the laboratory of F. R. Whatley FRS; then in Warwick, with J. Bennett, in the Chloroplast Laboratory of R. J. Ellis FRS, also working in Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, with C. J. Arntzen. As a lecturer in Leeds University, Allen did sabbatical work the laboratory of K. Sauer, University of California, Berkeley. Allen became a professor at the universities of Oslo, Norway (1990-92), and Lund, Sweden (1992-2005). At Queen Mary from 2005, Allen held a Royal Society-Wolfson Research Merit Award, and Fellowship of the Linnean Society of London from 2009. Allen's contributions include demonstration of superoxide in photosynthetic oxygen reduction, redox control of protein phosphorylation, regulation of light-harvesting structure and function, and transcription of chloroplast and mitochondrial DNA. Allen’s CoRRHypothesis for the evolution and function of cytoplasmic genomes led to the discovery of Chloroplast Sensor Kinase and makes further predictions concerning the dialogue between bioenergetics and gene expression.