Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English en
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS
Content archived on 2024-06-16

How plants can live on solar energy and water; biophysical investigations of O2 evolution in photosystem II, the key reaction in photosynthesis

Objective

Research topic. The photosynthetic conversion of solar energy to chemical energy is by no comparison the most important energy process on earth. The biosphere is dominated by the oxygen evolving (or water oxidizing) organisms i.e. plants, algae and cyanobacteria. These use water as substrate: thereby they can live almost everywhere. The key reaction is the light-driven oxidation of water that provides the biosphere with an unlimited electron source. This fundamental reaction is carried out by Photosystem II, which oxidizes water to oxygen and protons. This seems to be a simple reaction, but in nature only PSII reaches potentials (>+lV) high enough to oxidize water. The difficulty is also clear from chemistry and there exists few, if any, man-made catalyst s able to carry out the reaction.

The applicant will study the mechanism of the oxygen evolving machinery (water oxidizing complex) in Photosystem II (PSII). In particular we concentrate on proton currents between the Mn-cluster and the tyrosine in the intermediate redox states (S-states). We study these components by state-of-the-art EPR spectroscopy in synchronized PSII centres at different pH,by illumination at ultra-low temperature etc. The intention is to bring the applicant up-to-date in the use of EPR spectroscopy and other biophysical techniques, a topic at the forefront of today's biophysical research. The oxidative chemistry and the biochemistry in PSII offer a range of highly interesting and unique reactions. The applicant will focus on these reactions in his research.

Training program. The applicant has chosen the group to learn and use sophisticated EPRspectroscopy. This will be accomplished by EPR courses specifically designed to fit the applicant's needs to carry out his research project. The training program also contains courses in photosynthesis, participation in outside courses in EPR and other relevant activities at outside institutions.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.

You need to log in or register to use this function

Keywords

Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

FP6-2002-MOBILITY-7
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

IIF - Marie Curie actions-Incoming International Fellowships

Coordinator

UPPSALA UNIVERSITY
EU contribution
No data
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

No data
My booklet 0 0