McDermott et al. discuss gene expression in cyanobacterium Cyanothece

McDermott et al. developed a circular, wreath-like, graph to display all the genes being expressed by the cyanobacterium Cyanothece over a 24-hour period. This depiction illustrated the complex genetic network that enables Cyanothece to switch its cell between photosynthesis and nitrogen fixation as the day turns to night.

Cyanothece makes "sugar" when there's daylight and then spends the night breaking down that "sugar" to fix nitrogen and to produce other compounds. A modeling approach [ Inferelator ] identified an unnamed gene, currently labeled as gene cce_0678, as being key to the cyanobacterium's production of RuBisCO, a well-known enzyme that's important in photosynthesis. Without cce_0678, the model predicted RuBisCO production would decrease by about 60 percent.

Publication: Jason E. McDermott, Christopher S. Oehmen, Lee Ann McCue, Eric Hill, Daniel M. Choi, Jana Stöckel, Michelle Liberton, Himadri B. Pakrasi and Louis A. Sherman, A model of cyclic transcriptomic behavior in the cyanobacterium Cyanothece sp. ATCC 51142, Molecular BioSystems, published online June 23, 2011, DOI: 10.1039/C1MB05006K. http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2011/mb/c1mb05006k

key words: Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Cross-reference: US published application 20110151531 . US published application 20080085520 titled Production and Secretion of Glucose in Photosynthetic Prokaryotes (Cyanobacteria)

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