Professor Mike Blatt

Current project:

MAGIC – a Multi-tiered Approach to Gaining Increased Carbon for photosynthesis

Funded by the NSF/BBSRC Photosynthesis Ideas Lab

Website: magic.psrg.org.uk

Mike Blatt leads a consortium of seven labs in the USA and UK to develop a synthetic approach to concentrating carbon dioxide for fixation by RubisCO in plants and cyanobacteria. The consortium is employing halorhodopsin to energize the process through alternate strategies of chloride coupling to bicarbonate transport using anion exchange and of direct modification of halorhodopsin to transport bicarbonate directly. Carbon dioxide captured by the system is then transferred using metabolic scaffolds to ensure delivery to the binding site of RubisCO. Collaborators in the UK are Julian Hibberd (Cambridge), Nick Smirnoff (Exeter) and Nigel Burroughs (Warwick); collaborators in the USA are John Golbeck (Penn State) and Cheryl Kerfeld (MSU) and Manish Kumar (Penn State).