Thursday 13th December, Júlia Puig, predoctoral researcher from the Biological Oceanography Group from the CIM-UVIGO, presented in the last conference of the Café con Sal cycle VIII Edition, the conference “Physiology, gene expression and community structure of phytoplankton under future CO2 conditions”.
The atmospheric CO2 has increased exponentially from the Industrial Revolution due to the emissions from fossil-fuel burning, cement production, deforestation and other land-use changes. 26% of this anthropogenic CO2 is absorbed by the ocean (Lequere et al., 2014) having important consequences to calcification, primary production, diversity and several other processes related to phytoplankton physiology. Among them, the activity of the mechanisms that allow to incorporate and maintain a constant reservoir of CO2 in the active center of rubisco, the Carbon Concentrating Mechanisms (CCMs), are one of the main target processes affected by the changes in CO2 concentrations. Previous studies revealed a down-regulation of the CCMs under future CO2 concentrations. However, the consequences of phytoplankton CCMs down-regulation under high CO2 levels are still not well understood.
In this context, Júlia Puig, directed by Cristina Sobrino and with collaboration of her research group, is developing her phD thesis “Effect of the atmospheric CO2 increase on marine phytoplankton: physiology, metabolism and interactions with other factors of global change” with the aim to study the relevance of CCMs activity under future CO2 conditions analyzing the response in marine phytoplankton from the gene expression, metabolism and community structure point of view.
During the conference, Júlia Puig presented a general view of her thesis focusing on the gene expression of CCMs.
The conference took place at the conference room of the ECIMAT at 11:00h (CEST) and was streamed on http://tv.uvigo.es/es/directo/1.html being permanently available on UVigoTV website
In te next links you can see the complete videoconference of Júlia Puig:
- Presentación (Alba Hernández, ECIMAT-CIM)
- Conferencia (Júlia Puig, Oceanografía Biolóxica, CIM)
- Debate