[Plsgs] Meeting with Dr. Laura Gunn - Tuesday March 12

[Woodson, Jesse D - (jessewoodson)]

Dear SPLS community,

I am hosting next week's SPLS seminar speaker, Dr. Laura Gunn from Cornell University (see bio and abstract below). Her work broadly revolves around improving photosynthesis through Rubisco engineering.

If you can, I urge you to sign up<https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gK0mYLURHjzVzKFeDlyC7ctWQcb44gZhtlVJMw29Pdo/edit#gid=1786127533> to meet with her on Tuesday March 12 (some spots available Monday afternoon as well).

Graduate students, please sign up<https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gK0mYLURHjzVzKFeDlyC7ctWQcb44gZhtlVJMw29Pdo/edit#gid=1786127533> to have lunch!

Finally, I am also looking for a few people to have dinner with us on Monday or Tuesday night. Let me know!

Thank you and please let me know if you have any questions.

Best,

-Jesse

Dr. Laura Gunn - Assistant Professor, Cornell University
Seminar Tuesday March, 12 4:00 PM - Marley 230 (Zoom link will also be provided)


Title - Rubisco structural studies: are we scraping the bottom of the beta-alpha barrel?



Abstract:

The CO2-fixing enzyme Ribulose-1,5-carboxylase/oxygenase (Rubisco) represents the major point of carbon entry into the biosphere. Rubisco has a slow catalytic rate and exhibits poor substrate specificity such that Rubisco catalysis often limits the growth rate of photosynthetic organisms and, accordingly, Rubisco catalysis is a major engineering target to boost crop yield. Rubiscos from higher plants are comprised of eight catalytic large- (LSu) and eight auxillary small- (SSu) subunits, which form a ≈ 550 kDa L8S8 hexadecamer. Despite there being over 80 Rubisco structures deposited in the Protein Data bank, attempts to rationally engineer a more efficient Rubisco to boost crop performance have been, at best, underwhelming.



The overall structure is highly conserved amongst plant Rubiscos. Rubisco structures fail to provide predictive insights into why single point mutations distant from the catalytic site often dramatically impair enzyme function and, similarly, what minor structural variation might translate to kinetic improvements. While the first crystal structures provided key information about Rubisco architecture and gave mechanistic insights, can we garner meaningful insights from static images of yet more Rubiscos that, quite frankly, look just like all the others?



Dr. Gunn argues that structural biology in the context of Rubisco is not dead. She will discuss her work producing x-ray and CryoEM Rubisco structures from archaea, algae and higher plants, and the surprising answers you can get, if only you ask the right questions. These answers reveal novel structure-function, appreciation of the Rubisco biogenesis pathway and new insights into the Rubisco catalytic mechanism.



Speaker Bio:

Dr. Laura Gunn received her PhD from the Australian National University in Dr. Spencer Whitney’s lab investigating ways to improve RuBisCO efficiency and to improve photosynthesis. She was a principal investigator at Uppsala University in Sweden before starting as an Assistant professor at Cornell University in 2021.



Jesse Woodson, PhD
Associate Professor, School of Plant Sciences
University of Arizona
Office: Marley 541E
Office phone: (520) 621-3970
Lab phone: (520) 621-4746
https://cals.arizona.edu/spls/content/jesse

Mailing address:
303 Forbes Hall
1140 E. South Campus Drive
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721-0036

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