Date/Time
Date(s) - 01/05/2019
7:30 pm - 9:30 pm
Jonathan S Lindsey – North Carolina State University
Photosynthesis is a vital step in the evolution of life that occurred very early in Earth’s evolutionary history. Our own origins-related work in organic chemistry has been aimed at understanding how the porphyrin pigments underlying photosynthesis could originate at the time of the origin of life. We also study the genomes of cyanobacteria in order to understand how photosynthesis has continued to evolve in modern organisms, and we develop practical applications of porphyrins for capturing light in medicine (e.g. cancer detection).
Jonathan S. Lindsey received his B.S. Degree in Chemistry from Indiana University at Bloomington. He earned the Ph.D. degree from The Rockefeller University in 1983. His doctoral work with Dr. David C. Mauzerall concerned the synthesis and characterization of a 3-dimensional molecular architecture for studies of light-driven electron-transfer reactions, as occur in the reaction center of photosynthetic bacteria. After continuing for one-year as a postdoctoral fellow at Rockefeller, he spent 12 years on the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University, and moved in 1996 to North Carolina State University as Glaxo Distinguished University Professor of Chemistry.