Professor David Richardson - Greenhouse gases and bioenergy

Who should attend?

This session is open to all researchers, postdocs, and postgraduate students.

Full abstract

We humans obtain the energy we need for life by respiring oxygen. This process involves using electrons extracted from the food we eat to convert oxygen to water in a process known as oxygen reduction. Free energy is released in this process and we use this to make ATP, which is the universal energy currency of life.

Our dependency on oxygen makes us 'obligate aerobes', take away the oxygen and we die. Thus we are confined to living on the surface of planet Earth where oxygen is freely available.

However, the vast proportion of Earth's habitable environments are not exploited by humans, but by micro-organisms, including bacteria, that can live in the absence of oxygen in 'anoxic' environments where they catalyse a process called anaerobic respiration.

These bacteria impact on the balance of several biogeochemical cycles, such as the nitrogen, sulphur and carbon cycles and can in turn influence the release of potent greenhouse gases, such as nitrous oxide.

Many pathogenic bacteria use anaerobic respiration of substrates such as nitrate to survive and proliferate in parts of our gut where oxygen is absent. Incredibly, some bacteria can also live deep in the earth's subsurface and survive by 'respiring rocks'. This is because some of the most abundant respiratory substrates in the earth's subsurface environments are insoluble minerals of iron.

Such bacteria can have potentially important biotechnological impacts in bioremediation of environments contaminated with toxic organic pollutants or radioactive metals, or in microbial fuel cells where the bacteria are used to generate electric currents (bioenergy).

This lecture will explore a number of bacterial respiratory processes, particularly those associated with the nitrogen and iron cycles, and their potential environmental, biomedical and biotechnological impact.

Biography - Professor David Richardson

David Richardson is the 9th Vice-Chancellor of the University of East Anglia and took office in 2014, after 23 years at UEA.  David was born and brought up near Newcastle-upon-Tyne, was educated at the University of Keele (BSc, Biochemistry) and the University of Birmingham (PhD, 1988) and undertook post-doctoral research at the University of Oxford 1988-91.  He joined the University of East Anglia as a lecturer in 1991, became Professor of Bacterial Biochemistry in 2001, Dean of the Faculty of Science and Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research) before being appointed Deputy Vice-Chancellor in 2012 and Vice-Chancellor in 2014.

David was awarded the Society for General Microbiology Fleming Medal in 1999 and is a recipient of the Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award.  His research group is active in the area of bacterial bioenergetics, and his work has shed important light on the mechanism of greenhouse gas production by bacteria and the molecular basis and function of bacterial nanowires.

David is active in a range of national and regional HE bodies including the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital (NNUH), New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership, Norwich Research Park LLP and the Norfolk and Norwich Festival Trust.

David and his wife Andrea, who also works at UEA as Director of Learning and Teaching, are keen art collectors and enjoy spending time on the North Norfolk coast.  Originating from Newcastle, but almost naturalised to Norwich, David splits his loyalties between the Canaries and the Magpies.  David and Andrea will each celebrate 25 years at UEA in 2016.

Registration

To register for this seminar please email research-events@exeter.ac.uk.