The SFB 1078 kindly invites you to the the following seminar, hosted by Dennis Nürnberg.

Speaker: Dr. Tanai Cardona - Faculty of Natural Sciences, Department of Life Sciences, Imperial College London, UK

Title: Time-resolved origin and evolution of oxygenic photosynthesis

Abstract

It is generally assumed that water oxidation is a late innovation relative to the origin of life, bioenergetics, the diversification of bacteria, and the origin of anoxygenic photosynthesis. However, how and when exactly oxygenic photosynthesis originated remains unresolved. I will show how the molecular evolution of photochemical reaction centres, and in particular, of Photosystem II, challenges these classical perspectives on the evolution of photosynthesis and turns them upside down. I will discuss how it is more likely that photosynthetic water oxidation is a primordial trait of life, originating long before the emergence of what today we understand as cyanobacteria.