Reports on the Forum of Great Minds

发布时间：2018-06-26 浏览次数：267

Invited by the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) and the Science and Technology Bureau of Hefei, the US National Academy of Sciences member Prof. Susan S. Golden from the University of California, an Diego (UCSD) and Prof. James W. Golden from UCSD visit USTC and give academic reports on the Forum of Great Minds on June 25th.The reports are entitled respectively “How Cyanobacteria tell time” and “Cyanobacterial genetic engineering”.

A circadian clock is a biochemical oscillator essential for biological phenomena and metabolic control. In 2017, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to three scientists for their discoveries of molecular mechanisms controlling the circadian rhythm in fruit flies. In her report, Prof. Susan S. Golden introduces the discovery and identification of circadian clock of cyanobacteria and the molecular mechanism controlling the circadian rhythm in cyanobacteria. The cyanobacterium builds a circadian clock on an oscillator composed of proteins KaiABC, which can recapitulate a circadian rhythm of KaiC phosphorylation. The cyanobacterial clock is composed of a novel post-translational oscillator coupled with a reinforcing transcription-translation oscillation, a redox-sensing input pathway, and a global output pathway that controls the genome through changes in DNA topology.

Prof. Susan S. Golden reports on the Forum of Great Minds

Then Prof. James W. Golden, who has conducted groundbreaking research into gene editing and bacterial strain selection, introduces the innovation and application of cyanobacterial genetic engineering. By means of genetic engineering, Prof. James W. Golden developed a series of toolboxes applicable to cyanobacterial genetic manipulation and optimized these toolboxes so that they adapt to a wider range of cyanobacteria. For instance, through random mutations in the promoter region of various bacterial strains, which controls transcription strength ,Prof. James W. Golden successfully obtained some rare polyunsaturated fatty acids expressed by cyanobacterial genes.

Prof. James W. Golden reports on the Forum of Great Mind

After the reports, Prof. Susan S. Golden and Prof. James W. Golden reply the questions raised by teachers and students .Also,they make a profound discussion on relevant academic problems. The atmosphere of the forum keeps warm and students find enormous benefits from it.

Question and answer session

The forum is hosted by Prof. ZHOU Congzhao of the School of Life Sciences of USTC.

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