Short presentation

Research

• Construction and functional analysis of Arabidopsis and tobacco plants lacking specific subunits of photosystem I by antisense suppression and gene knock-outs.

• The biochemistry of late steps in the chlorophyll biosynthesis pathway and identification of new proteins and their corresponding genes.

• Determination of protein topology and insertion mechanisms by using in vitro import assays of radio-labelled precursor proteins into isolated chloroplasts and thylakoids.

• Use of plant chloroplast, cyanobacteria and green algae in synthetic biology and bioengineering.

CV

Academic degrees

• 1993 Ph.D.

• 1989 M.Sc. (cand.agro)

Administrative and professional activities

• Head of Section for Molecular Plant Biology (2007-2019)
• Head of Copenhagen Plant Science Centre (2013-2019)

Positions held

• 2019- : Professor in plant based food biochemistry at Dept. Food Science, University of Copenhagen

• 2009-2019 : Professor in molecular biology of plant photosynthesis at Dept. of Plant Biology and Biotechnology, University of Copenhagen

• 1998-2009: Associate Professor at Dept. of Plant Biology and Biotechnology, University of Copenhagen

• 1995-1998: Post-doctoral fellow in the laboratory of Professor C. Neil Hunter at Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, University of Sheffield, U.K.

• 1993-1995: Post-doctoral fellow at Genetic Section, Dept. of Ecology and Molecular Biology, KVL.

• 1990-1993: Ph.D.-student fellowship at Genetics Section, Dept. of Ecology and Mol. Biology, KVL

Short presentation

I have a degree in agronomy (1989), a PhD in molecular genetics (1993) and has worked as postdoc, in Copenhagen and in Sheffield, UK. My interests are photosynthesis, in particular the composition and function of the photosystems, chlorophyll biosynthesis and chloroplast biology.

In 2006 I became independent group leader. I have worked on elucidation of the function of photosystem subunits and characterization of enzymes in chlorophyll biosynthesis. More recently, my focus has been on synthetic biology and metabolic engineering in photosynthetic organisms. Specifically we have combined cytochrome P450-dependent biosynthetic pathways and photosystems in both chloroplasts and cyanobacteria to achieve redirection of photosynthetic electrons towards new pathways. In these projects, the pathways use light-dependent reducing power generated by the photosystems directly.