Our basic research focuses on
regulation of photosynthesis, which is intimately linked with plant
stress responses and signalling cascades to regulate nuclear gene
expression. Particular emphasis is also put on evolutionary aspects of
regulation of thylakoid light harvesting and energy conversion systems. A
diverse set of photoautotrophic oxygen evolving organisms, from
cyanobacteria, green algae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii and diatoms to a
moss Physcomitrella patens and ferns as well as to the model higher
plants Arabidopsis thaliana and spruce, are used in our research. We aim
at understanding (i) the mechanisms and dynamic regulation of the rapid
photophysical and photochemical processes of the light energy capture
and the photosynthetic electron transfer, (ii) how the structure and
organisation of the thylakoid protein complexes dynamically respond to
environmental changes, and (iii) how the signals originating from the
photosynthetic apparatus relay information to the nuclear genome for
regulation of gene expression and subsequent acclimation of the
photosynthetic organism to changing environmental conditions. Likewise
(iv) the evolution of thylakoid regulatory mechanisms, with special
emphasis on the replacement of the cyanobacterial flavodiiron proteins
with other regulatory mechanisms in higher plants, is investigated to
understand how it was possible for photosynthetic organisms to move from
oceans to the land.

Our applied research focuses on replacement
of fossil raw materials and aims at production of carbon-neutral
biosolarfuels and chemicals using cyanobacteria as a production chassis.
In the synthetic biology program, we aim at production of fuels and
chemicals with high photon conversion efficiency, significantly higher
compared to natural pathways. The main goal is economically viable
conversion of solar energy to a fuel using inexhaustible raw materials:
sunlight, water and CO2. Applied research is intimately integrated with
our basic research and comprises the designing, engineering and
optimisation of light harvesting, electron transfer and metabolic
pathways.