On Thursday, December 13, Júlia Puig, a predoctoral student of the Biological Oceanography group at the University of Vigo, presented, in the final lecture of the 8th edition of the “Café con Sal” program, an overview of her thesis with the talk “Physiology, gene expression and community structure of phytoplankton under future CO2 conditions”.
Atmospheric CO2 has increased exponentially since the Industrial Revolution due to fossil fuel emissions, cement production, deforestation, and other land-use changes. About 26% of this anthropogenic CO2 is absorbed by the ocean, with significant consequences for calcification, primary production, diversity, and other processes related to phytoplankton physiology. Among these processes, the increase in CO2 is reducing the activity of the mechanisms that allow CO2 to be incorporated and maintained in a constant pool at the active site of Rubisco, the main enzyme of photosynthesis (Carbon Concentrating Mechanisms, CCMs). Although previous studies have documented this downregulation, they do not explain the reasons or the mechanisms behind the process.
In this context, Júlia Puig, supervised by Cristina Sobrino and with the collaboration of her research group, is conducting her doctoral thesis “Effect of the atmospheric CO2 increase on marine phytoplankton: physiology, metabolism and interactions with other factors of global change.” Her aim is to understand the importance of CCM activity in response to the projected increase of CO2 in the ocean, analyzing the response of marine phytoplankton at the levels of gene expression, metabolism, and community structure.
During the lecture, Júlia Puig provided an overview of her thesis, focusing on the importance of CCMs and the results obtained from studying CCM gene expression.
