Structure and dynamics of the thylakoid membrane

Jan Mary Anderson FRS (1932-) is a scientist from New Zealand, distinguished by her investigation of photosynthesis. She was the first to show that the photosynthetic mechanism comprises two fundamental components: photosystem I and photosytem II.Anderson is currently an Adjunct Professor at the Australian National University.

Werner Kühlbrandt studied chemistry and crystallography in Berlin, and went on to do his PhD with Nigel Unwin at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, investigating the structure of two-dimensional ribosome crystals by electron microscopy. He turned to structural studies of membrane proteins as a postdoc, first at the ETH Zürich, and then at Imperial College London. After a brief interlude at UC Berkeley, CA, he became a group leader at the EMBL Heidelberg in 1988. Since 1997 he is a director at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics in Frankfurt, Germany, where his department of Structural Biology studies the structure and mechanisms of membrane proteins by X-ray and electron crystallography, single-particle cryo-EM, electron tomography and biophysical techniques.

Professor Sir John Walker FRS studied chemistry at St Catherine’s College Oxford. After periods of study and research at the University of Wisconsin USA, and The Pasteur Institute in Paris, in 1974 he joined the Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, where he established the details of the modified genetic code of mitochondria, helped to discover overlapping genes in bacteriophages and discovered the two eponymous protein sequence motifs involved in binding nucleotides. They are the most widely dispersed motifs in the entire biological kingdom. Here, he also developed his interest in how energy in food is converted into the molecule ATP, the energy currency of life. In 1994, his work led to the realisation that in a complex molecular machine in our bodies, the energy released by the oxidation of dietary sugars and fats is coupled by a mechanical rotary mechanism to the chemical synthesis of ATP. This work led to the award of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1997. In 1998, he was appointed Director of the MRC Dunn Human Nutrition Unit in Cambridge, which became the MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit in 2008. Since 2013 he has been Director Emeritus. Here he continues to delve deeper into the fundamental basis of energy conversion in biology. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, and in 2012, he received its Copley Medal, the UK’s highest scientific accolade. He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, a Foreign Member of L’Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, The Royal Society of New Zealand and a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences.

Bill Cramer's career can be summarized as a step down by a factor of 10 to the exponent nineteen, the energy in electron-volts (eV) of the cosmic rays that he studied as an undergraduate and grad student, to the 1 eV characteristic energy of the electron transfer events that he studies in analysis of structure-function of the photosynthetic cytochrome b6f electron transport complex. As a consequence of attempts to follow these different trajectories of charged atomic particles, and studies on other problems in membrane protein structural biology, he is a Fellow of the Biophysical Society and Henry Koffler Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences at Purdue University.

Professor James Barber, born 16 July 1940, is the Ernst Chain Professor of Biochemistry at the Imperial College London, Visiting Nanyang Professor to Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and Visiting Professor to the Politecnico di Torino, Italy. He is Fellow of the Royal Society, Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, a member of the European Academy (Academia Europæa) and a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Recently, he served as President of the International Society of Photosynthesis Research.

Professor Barber graduated from the University of Wales with a degree in Chemistry, and later gained a MSc and PhD in Biophysics from the University of East Anglia. After a postdoctoral year in The Netherlands, he joined the academic staff at Imperial College London as a Lecturer in 1968. He was promoted to Full Professor in 1979.  In 1988, he served as Dean of the Royal College of Science, and from 1989 to 1999 was Head of the Biochemistry Department at Imperial College. Professor Barber has been awarded   honorary doctorates from Stockholm University and the University of East Anglia.

Professor Barber was awarded the Flintoff Medal by the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2002, the Italgas/Eni Prize for Energy and Enivronment in 2005, the Biochemical Society Novartis medal and prize in 2006, and the Wheland Medal and Prize from the University of Chicago in 2007.  In 2008 he gave Daniel Arnon Lecture,University of California, Berkeley, in 2009 Kuan Yew Distinguished Visitors Lectures (Singapore) and the G8University Summit Energy Lecture (Torino, Italy). Very recently he gave the Sir Ernst Chain Distinguished Lecture, Imperial College London.

Professor Barber primarily works on the molecular processes of Photosynthesis. The focus of his research has been the investigation of photosynthesis and the functional role of the photosystems with emphasis on their structures. Much of his work has focused on Photosystem Two, a biological machine able to use light energy to split water into oxygen and reducing equivalents, and Professor Barber contributed greatly to this subject by elucidating the structure of the catalytic centre for this reaction. To date, he has published over 500 research and review articles and produced 16 books covering various aspects of photosynthesis research.

Biography not yet available

Egbert Boekema was born in Groningen in 1952, studied (bio) chemistry at the University of Groningen and completed a PhD degree on the structure of the mitochondrial membrane protein NADH: ubiquinone oxidoreductase (complex I) in 1984. Electron microscopy and membrane proteins have been his key interests since then. First as a post-doctoral fellow from 1984 – 1989 in the department of electron microscopy at the Fritz‑Haber‑Institute of the Max‑Planck‑Society in Berlin, where he became interested in photosynthesis by Jan Dekker and Matthias Rögner, and later back in Groningen with a fellowship of the Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2004 he was appointed as professor and currently he is also serving as head of the GGB research school. His main topics are supercomplex structures from chloroplasts and mitochondria. He published on many relevant photosynthetic complexes, including photosystem I and II, IsiA, PsbS, ATPase, cytochrome b6f, phycobilisomes, chlorosomes, RC-Lh1, Lh2, LHCII and NDH-1. Last but not least he investigated   the structure of plant thylakoid membranes by cryo-electron tomography and single particle averaging. In his free time he likes bird watching in the countryside.

Eva-Mari Aro is a professor in Molecular Plant Biology at Turku University, Finland. Academy professor 1998-2008 and 2014-2018. Research: photosynthesis, plant stress biology, cyanobacteria for sustainable applications. President/past president of the International Society of Photosynthesis Research 2004-2010, board member of European Plant Science Organisation and European Academies of Science Advisory Council (EASAC), President and vice president of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters (2012-2015). Chair of the Finnish Centers of Excellence: 2008-2014 "Integrative Photosynthesis and Bioactive Compound Research at Systems Biology Level" and 2014-2019 “Molecular Biology of Primary Producers”. Honorary doctor of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Umeå and University of Helsinki.

Biography not yet available

Jean-David Rochaix gained a Physics diploma in 1968 from the University of Lausanne, his PhD in Biophysics in 1972 from Harvard University.  From 1972-1974 he was a post-doctoral fellow (Fogarty NIH fellowship) in the Department of Biology, Yale University.  From 1974-1981 he was Chargé de recherches, Department of Molecular Biology, University of Geneva, and since 1981 he has been Professor, Departments of Molecular Biology and Plant Biology, University of Geneva.  His departments study the biogenesis of the photosynthetic apparatus of the green unicellular alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii and the land plant Arabidopsis using mostly molecular-genetic approaches. This process involves a concerted interplay between two genetic systems localized in the chloroplast and nucleus of the cells and is strongly influenced by environmental conditions. They also study the acclimation of plants and algae to changes in the quality and quantity of light. In this way, they have identified and characterized some of the key players in this acclimation process which are the Stt7/STN7 and Stl1/STN8 thylakoid protein kinases and the PPH1/TAB38 protein phosphatase.

Peter Nixon is currently a Professor of Biochemistry within the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial College London and a visiting Professor within the School of Biological Sciences at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His research focuses on the assembly and maintenance of the photosynthetic apparatus in the thylakoid membrane and more recently the use of synthetic biology approaches to develop cyanobacterial and chloroplasts as ‘solar biorefineries’ for the production of high-value products. He is co-convenor of the Photosynthesis and Metabolism Group of the Society of Experimental Biology.

"Professor W S (Fred) Chow graduated with a PhD at The Flinders University of South Australia in 1977.  After an appointment at CSIRO Plant Industry (1977-1978), he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Pure and Applied Biology, Imperial College London (1979-1981) and a Senior Scientific Officer, Glasshouse Crops Research Institute, Littlehampton, U.K. (1981-1985).  He then returned to Canberra to work at CSIRO Plant Industry (1985-1996), eventually as a Senior Principal Research Scientist.  From 1996 to the present, he has been doing research at The Australian National University, Canberra, where he has been a professor since 2007.

His main research interests are:

• In vivo monitoring of light-induced electron transfers in leaf photosynthesis;
• Quantification, functionality and stability of Photosystem II, which splits water into oxygen, protons and electrons during photosynthesis;
• Photoinactivation of Photosystem II;
• Acclimation of photosynthesis to the light environment;
• Cyclic electron flow around Photosystem I; and
• Entropy and entropy production in relation to chloroplast structure and function."

Christine Helen Foyer is the Professor of Plant Sciences at the University of Leeds, Leeds, UK. She is also a Winthrop Professor at The University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia and a Pao Yu-Kong Chair Professor of Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China. She is a member of the French Academy of Agriculture and the Secretary General of the Federation of European Plant Biologists. She is member of BBSRCCommittee B and the BBSRC (UK) Pool of Experts. She is an Annals of Botany Company Board Member, an Associate Editor for Plant, Cell and Environment and on the Editorial Boards of PhysiologiaPlantarum, Journal of Experimental Botany and Frontiers in Plant Sciences. She is a Scientific Advisory Board member forthe Helmholtz Center Munich. Her current H-Index is 83. Her research interests concern how primary processes (photosynthesis, respiration) alter the reduction/oxidation (redox) status of the cell and influence plant growth and defence responses to stresses such as drought, chilling, high light and aphid infestation.

Barry Osmond is a well known Australian plant biologist (PhD Adelaide 1963-65). His career in photosynthetic ecophysiology emerged from the unparalleled opportunities formerly available in the Research School of Biological Sciences, Institute of Advanced Studies, Australian National University (1967-2001). He was Director, Biosciences Center, Desert Research Institute, University of Nevada Reno (1981-86) and Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor, Department of Botany, Duke University (1987-91) before returning to Australia as Director RSBS and leader of the Photobioenergetics Research Group (1991-1998). Resigning from ANU in 2001, he moved to Columbia University’s visionary Biosphere 2 Center to promote new approaches in experimental ecosystem and climate change science, now described in some 70 publications arising from research 1998-2003. In retirement he is an Honorary Visiting Fellow at ANU and holds a fractional appointment in the University of Wollongong where he continues research on inner canopy leaves of woody plants as they grow old in the shade.

Professor Lixin Zhang gained a BSc at Sichuan University in 1992, and a Ph Dat Lanzhou University in 1997.  Research and professional experience includes: 1997 – 2001 post-doctoral fellow, Department of biology, University of Turku, Finland ; 2000 - Research Professor, Cold and Arid Environmental Engineering Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences; 2002 - Professor, School of Life Sciences, Lanzhou University; 2003 - Professor, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences; and since 2010 Deputy director, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences.  He is Representative of Africa, Asia, Oceania for the International Society of Photosynthesis Research (2010-), Associate Editor of Photosynthesis Research (2011-), and is a member of the editorial boards for Molecular Plant, (2008-), the Journal of Integrative Plant Biology, (2005-), Chinese Science Bulletin (2008-) and Advances in Photosynthesis and Respiration (2010-).  Research interests include chloroplast development/chloroplast gene expression; synthesis, assembly and degradation of photosynthetic protein complexes and chloroplast signal transduction

Jane Langdale is Professor of Plant Developmental Genetics, and Head of the Department of Plant Sciences, at the University of Oxford. Her research on chloroplast development started in the late 1980s when she worked on the genetic mechanisms underpinning dimorphic chloroplast development in the C₄ plant maize. That work led on to the identification of GLK transcription factors, that regulate chloroplast development in all land plant species studied so far. More recently she has been involved in the multi-national effort to engineer ‘C₄ rice’.