CBA 2022 annual lecture on "The nitrogen cycle – from gene to system" will be given by Professor Lars Bakken from the NMBU Nitrogen Group on the 13th of October at 14:00 at Kristine Bonnevies Hus (seminarrom 3508) in Blindern.
All CBA participants and anyone who is interested are invited to attend the annual lecture. Here is a short description about the lecture :
Starting with an overview of the nitrogen cycle, as escalated by humans, I will zoom in on microbial nitrogen transformations, and the biochemistry, ecophysiology and regulatory biology of the functional groups of organisms that play key roles in the nitrogen cycling, and their impacts on atmospheric chemistry and global warming.
I will summarize recent progress in our understanding of these organisms, achieved through studies of model organisms, consortia, and natural systems, empowered by genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and genetic manipulation, sharpened by mathematical modelling.
The title of my talk indicates links between a system’s DNA-pool (eDNA) and its function, which is plausibly real, but notoriously hard to decipher. Numerous studies have shown that e-DNA fails to predict ecosystems’ functional profile, and there are obvious reasons for this. A gene is not necessarily transcribed (!), mRNA is not necessarily translated, and the protein is not necessarily folded and matured correctly. I will give one example from our own research: hampered maturation of N2O reductase (NosZ) at pH ≤ 6, which explains why acidification enhance N2O emission.
Much of our research in NMBU Nitrogen Group is motivated by the desire to understand, and ultimately reduce the N2O emission to the atmosphere. I will summarize various options, and present our recent breakthrough in curbing N2O emissions from agricultural soils.
Finally, I ask if we can use Systems Biology approaches on ecosystems = Systems Ecology. The task is probably suicidal if applied to C-turnover, due to overwhelming complexity. But nitrogen redox transformations are less complex, hence manageable. Could this task bridge CBA and NMBU Nitrogen group?