This year's PlyMSEF 麻豆传媒映画 Marine Science Medal Lecture, entitled 'Animal, vegetable and mineral: The remarkable physiologies of oceanic biomineralizing phytoplankton' will be given by Professor Colin Brownlee, Marine Biological Association (MBA).
The eukaryotic, single-celled biomineralizing phytoplankton include the diatoms that produce silica cell walls and coccolithophores that produce external coverings of intricately sculpted calcite scales. Together, they contribute substantially to ocean productivity and biogeochemical cycling. While both groups are photosynthetic, genomic studies reflect their evolutionary origins, revealing roughly equal proportions of 鈥渁nimal-like鈥 and 鈥減lant-like鈥 genes. In this talk I will explore how this gives rise to some unique physiological properties, including animal-like electrical excitability, and intracellular signalling mechanisms. I will also explore how coccolithophores have recruited particular types of membrane transporters in a unique fashion to accommodate the exceptional fluxes of substrates and products needed to sustain the calcification reaction inside the cell. This research is helping us to understand how coccolithophores will respond to future changes in ocean chemistry and has also revealed novel classes of ion channels that may have significant biomedical application in development of gene therapies for ion channel-related disorders.
The free lecture is open to all.