Algae made the earth habitable for humans, can they now help protect the planet from our impact?Edutalk
University of York Merchant Adventurers' Hall, Fossgate (Map)
Speaker
Luke Mackinder is a UKRI Future Leader Fellow and a 2018 Society for Experimental Biology Presidents Medallist for Cell Biology. His research investigates how diverse algae drive the global carbon cycle through efficient CO 2 fixation. Data generated by his team is guiding the engineering of enhanced CO 2 uptake systems on plants, with the goal of improving crop yields and biological based carbon capture. Luke did a Marie Curie Funded PhD at the GEOMAR-Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, Germany and the Marine Biological Association of the UK, followed by a 4-year Barbara McClintock postdoctoral fellowship at the Carnegie Institute for Plant Sciences, Stanford. In 2016 he started his own research group at York and was promoted to Professor in 2020. The Mackinder Lab is funded by the BBSRC, EPSRC, UKRI, Carbon Technology Research Foundation, the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Description
Merchant Adventurers' Science Discovery Lecture Algae remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at a rate four times faster than humans are releasing carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels. They achieve this through operating highly efficient carbon dioxide uptake mechanisms, turbocharging their photosynthesis and driving the global carbon cycle. In this talk Luke will take you on a journey from the atmosphere to the bottom of the oceans, from global warming to the nanoscale workings of these remarkable photosynthetic micro- organisms. He will discuss how knowing the intricate workings of algal carbon dioxide fixation may be applied to enhance crop yields and for engineering biological-based carbon capture.