Jessica Moon

Photosynthesis, the process by which plants produce oxygen and energy, is essential for plant growth and adaptation to changing environmental conditions. Chloroplasts, the site of photosynthesis, encode the proteins that carry out this process as well as the machineries that produce them. The plastid-encoded polymerase (PEP), responsible for transcribing photosynthetic genes, resembles the transcription machinery of bacteria as chloroplasts evolved from a photosynthetic bacterium. However, it also contains a number of additional components not found in bacteria, making it larger and more complex.

Transcription has to be tightly regulated to coordinate development and responses to the environment. Chloroplasts have maintained a reduced number of transcriptional regulators from their bacterial ancestor and also contain regulators of eukaryotic origin. Jessica aims to uncover how proteins of bacterial and eukaryotic origin interact to regulate transcription by this complex machine. She will use cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM), alongside biochemical and biophysical techniques, to study the mechanistic details of transcription regulation in the chloroplast. This understanding will provide a foundation for developing more photosynthetically robust crops that can better withstand a changing climate.