Burlacot Lab

Unraveling inefficiencies of photosynthesis in a changing world

Photosynthesis is the process by which plants and algae are using sun light energy to transform CO2 into biomass. Because photosynthesis is using a sustainable source of energy (sun light) and consumes the green house gas CO2 it holds great potential for becoming the center of the future bioeconomy. However, it's efficiency in transforming light energy to biomass is quite low (2-5%) and diminishes when acclimating to environmental fluctuations. Which hampers our ability to use it for biomanufacturing biofuels, pharmaceuticals or bioplastics. Our group will explore the mechanisms by which photosynthesis acclimates to environmental changes like light availability, CO2 concentration or temperature and pinpoint what mechanisms are generating inefficiences during photosynthesis.

To this end, we will be using the model green microalgae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, eventually expanding our acquired knowledge on other algae and on higher plants like Arabidopsis thaliana.

Our questions and goals: How are microalgae dynamically reacting to environmental fluctuations? How do molecular mechanisms of photosynthesis dynamically interact to optimise cell survival and growth under fluctuating conditions? What genes are important for acclimation to such fluctuations? Are these mechanisms equally efficient for allowing CO2 fixation? Can we modify key enzymes to make photosynthesis more efficient in some environments? 

While we will focus mostly on research at the Carnegie Institution, we of the Burlacot Lab recognise that we are in a diverse community and must take actions to ensure that everybody is treated equally and has equal access to academic opportunities. We acknowledge that we must act now to combat social inequalities, racism, sexism and any form of discrimination. We will contribute to fighting discriminations within science and academia and promote the path of people from underrepresented background in academia.

We aim to actively take part of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion commitement of the Carnegie Institution for science in this way.

 News

2023 10 Perspective on the mutliple roles of alternative photosynthetic electron flow published in New Phytol by Adrien! 


2023 09 The lab starts it's largest experiment ever to quantify how much proteins in Chlamydomonas are important to balance robustness and efficiency during light fluctuations


2023 08 New work from the lab experimentally unraveling the bioenergetics of CO2 fixation published in BioRxiv! 


2023 07 Adrien shows to MIT Chemists how microalgae fix CO2


2023 06 Collaborative paper lead by Dania Nanes Sarfati in BioRxiv "Coordinated wound responses in a regenerative animal-algal photosymbiotic metaorganism"


2023 04 New paper on the energetic network of the CCM published in Trends in Plant Science!

Press release here

2022 11 Adrien and Carolyne go on a trip in California to discover new microalgae


2022 09 Adrien gives a science popularization talk at the Learning Planet Institute in Paris

Link to the video (in French)

2022 07 New study from the lab on the role of photoprotection published in Plant Cell and Environment !


2022 04 New discovery on the enegization of the CO2  concentrating mechanism in Nature!

Press release here

2022 01 A new publication from our lab aimed for young student!


2021 11 Our lab participated to the nightlife at the Cal Academy of Science


Our location: 

Burlacot Lab
Carnegie Institution for Science
Department of Plant Biology
260 Panama street,
Stanford, CA 94305

All algal bloom pictures in this page are taken from the NASA Wordlview application, part of the NASA Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS).