Today’s seminar illustrates how research initiated on bacteria and chloroplasts has led to technologies with applications relevant to the human diet. The trail starts with work on ferredoxin from fermentative bacteria that I did as a postdoc in Berkeley. This early work led to the identification of a previously unknown mechanism of CO2 fixation and a carbon pathway functional in bacterial photosynthesis. These findings opened new vistas, including the discovery with chloroplasts that the protein thioredoxin functions universally in regulating the Calvin-Benson cycle in oxygenic photosynthesis. The thioredoxin results provided the background for research demonstrating its role in seed germination, which, in turn, laid the foundation for technologies to improve the nutritional quality of sorghum grain and to prepare leavened bread from rice flour. The research has taken place over a period spanning more than five decades. The experiments form a continuum and have led to a set of principles embracing processes that extend far beyond bacteria and chloroplasts.
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