July 2

July 2, 2007
Jannette O. Nuestro’s blog
Dr. Fromme gave a powerpoint presentation on cyanobacteria, Photosystems I and Photosystems II. The question is why use Cyanobacteria (common term, blue green algae although not an algae), instead of plants? Cyanobacteria have been in use and is considered to be a free-living chloroplast, has large membrane antennae called phycobilisomes and PSII, which allows it to harvest light, better developed than plants and has complete visible light spectrum and collects green light unlike plants that only collects red and blue light and cyanobacteria is more stable than plants due to cytochrome present. Photysystems I (PSI) leads to reduction of energy NADPH which also allows an easier crystallization of protein than PSII . Photosystems II (PSII) role is to split water ( H2O) molecule to oxygen which is also Dr. Fromme’s goal and would like find out how plants perform this process. The second part of the day is the introduction to x-ray crystallography. Dr. Raimund Fromme will be handling our group this week for the x-ray crystallography of protein. He gave a power point presentation as a brief overview while we were waiting for the protein being centrifuged. Afterwards, the protein was stored in the fridge for lab tomorrow. The powerpoint presentation from both researchers was a great way for us to understand what was going on, although, I must admit my brain is a bit (a bit?) overwhelmed J.