Collaborative Research: Aureochromes-light signaling in the sea

光合生物不仅依靠光来固定二氧化碳，还利用光的信息来了解环境。科学界对陆地生物的光调节反应有广泛的了解。在那里，蓝光和红光感应蛋白帮助陆地植物确定诸如邻居竞争的存在或一天中的时间等信息。然而，大约71%的地球表面是水，水生环境强烈富集蓝光，缺乏红光。生活在淡水或海洋环境中的光合生物如何利用光的质量和数量信息是一个悬而未决的问题。作为该项目的一部分，pi将研究一组被称为Aureochromes的蓝光感应蛋白质的功能，这种蛋白质广泛分布在海洋藻类中。该项目还将培养跨学科（光化学、生物化学、细胞/分子生物学、数学建模）的本科生/研究生和博士后，并提供可视化工具，教授数学在化学和生物学入门课程中的应用。学校教师处于提高公众科学素养的第一线，本项目将继续开展先前资助的培训职前教育工作者的科学实践和教学工作，并确定这些职前教师如何学习，为什么学习，并调查他们的思维方式在研究和教学培训中是否发生了变化。利用单细胞微藻海洋纳米绿藻，pi将研究蛋白质光感受器的光化学动力学、表达模式和蛋白质-蛋白质相互作用网络形成光反应动力学的假设，从而影响生物体对变化的光通量的反应。为了实现对金黄色色素信号传导的全面理解，研究人员将开发金黄色色素信号转导的明确数学模型，在那里他们将通过实验确定调节这些LOV结构域光感受器光化学的动力学项，它们的竞争性二聚化，表达和降解率，以及DNA结合能力。综合起来，这个项目将研究这些因素如何影响转录活性和影响细胞生理。通过这种方式，本工作将能够构建一个完整的海洋生物蓝光调节模型，该模型将当地光化学与生物生理学结合在一个可预测的、可证伪的模型中。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Photosynthetic organisms rely on light not only to fix CO2, but they also use light information to learn about their environment. The scientific community has a broad understanding of light-regulated responses in organisms living on land. There, blue and red light sensing proteins help land plants determine information such as the presence of neighbor competition or the time of day. However, about 71% of the Earth surface is water, and aquatic environments are strongly enriched in blue light and deprived of red light. How photosynthetic organisms living in freshwater or marine environments harness light quality and quantity information is an open question. As part of this project the PIs will investigate the function of a group of blue light sensing proteins called Aureochromes, which are widely distributed in marine algae. This project will also train undergraduate/graduate students and postdoctoral associates across disciplines (photochemistry, biochemistry, cell/molecular biology, mathematical modeling) and provide visualization tools to teach the use of math in introductory chemistry and biology. School teachers are at the frontline of improving public scientific literacy and this project will continue previously funded work to train preservice educators on science practices and teaching, and identify how these preservice teachers learn, why they learn, and to investigate if their way of thinking changes during the research and teaching training.Using the unicellular microalga Nannochloropsis oceanica, the PIs will investigate the hypothesis that photochemical kinetics, expression patterns and protein-protein interaction networks of protein photoreceptors shape the dynamics of light responses and therefore the organism’s response to changing light fluencies. To achieve this global understanding of aureochrome signaling, the researchers will develop explicit mathematical models of aureochrome signal transduction, where they will experimentally determine kinetic terms regulating the photochemistry of these LOV domain photoreceptors, their competitive dimerization, expression and degradation rates, and DNA binding capacity. Combined, this project will examine how these factors influence transcriptional activity and impact cell physiology. In this manner, this work will enable the construction of a complete model of blue-light regulation of N. oceanica that integrates local photochemistry with organism’s physiology in a predictive, and falsifiable model.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.