15th May 2012 - Professor Yoshihiro Shiraiwa visits Glasgow

Issued: Tue, 15 May 2012 15:46:00 BST

Professor Yoshihiro Shiraiwa, the internationally prominent biogeochemist and microbiologist from Tsukuba University, Japan, visited Geographical and Earth Sciences, from May 15th to May 18th.

Professor Shiraiwa's research explores the enzymes associated with the uptake of CO₂ in photosynthesis and the biosynthesis of alkenones. Alkenones are lipids utilized by palaeoclimatologists in GES to reconstruct past temperatures from various aquatic archives and are being explored as a potential bio-fuel. Professor Shiraiwa has made new discoveries that help us understand the regulatory mechanisms of intracellular calcification potentially a key to removing ample quantities of carbon from the surface ocean, as well as, providing new evolutionary links to early endosymbiosis within marine algae.

His visit was funded as part of the University's investment in internationalisation, via an International Partnership Development Fund award to Dr Jaime Toney.