David Kramer
Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology | Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI, UNITED STATES
Expert in biofuels, photosynthesis
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Biography
Hannah Distinguished Professor in Photosynthesis and Bioenergetics. Energetics and control of photosynthesis electron and proton transfer reactions reactive oxygen generation the conversion of light energy by plants into forms usable for life understanding the processes involved at both molecular and physiological levels, how they are regulated and controlled how these processes define the energy budget of plants and the ecosystem how plants have evolved to support life in extreme environments
Among the tools used in Dr. Kramer’s lab are spectroscopic approaches including absorption, fluorescence, circular dichroism and electron spin resonance (EPR) applied to isolated membranes, organelles and intact plants. Students in the laboratory gain wide exposure to biophysical techniques and the important area of bioenergetics.
Industry Expertise (4)
Education/Learning
Environmental Services
Energy
Biotechnology
Areas of Expertise (7)
Biochemistry
Molecular Biology
Photosynthesis
Energy & Renewable Energy
Plant Biology
Phenotyping
Phenomics
Accomplishments (1)
Research Innovation Award (professional)
2016-08-22
Awarded by the the International Society of Photosynthesis Research.
Education (3)
University of Illinois: Ph.D., Biophysics 1990
University of Dayton: M.S., Cell Biology 1986
University of Dayton: B.S., Biology
Links (1)
News (5)
MSU's David Kramer Wins International Innovation Prize
MSU Today
2016-08-22
David Kramer, MSU Hannah Distinguished Professor in photosynthesis and bioenergetics, is the 2016 recipient of the International Society of Photosynthesis Research Innovation Award. This is the second major award for Kramer in 2016, the other being the prestigious Charles F. Kettering award for excellence in Photosynthesis Research...
MSU Builds High-Tech Test Track to Improve Crop Performance
MSU Today
2016-07-12
“With DEPI and all of its specialized equipment, we can make videos of a plants’ living processes,” said David Kramer, Hannah Distinguished Professor in Photosynthesis and Bioenergetics at the MSU-DOE Plant Research Laboratory and the paper’s co-author. “One way to make better plants is to test drive a range of plants with different genes and determine which genes, or combination of genes, make the plant better in different environmental conditions.”...
MSU Partners with ExxonMobil to Advance Biofuel Research
MSU Today
2015-09-30
David Kramer, MSU’s John Hannah Distinguished Professor in Photosynthesis and Bioenergetics at the MSU-DOE Plant and Research Laboratory, says that the overall goal of the partnership is to improve the efficiency of photosynthesis in microalgae to produce biofuels and bioproducts. “Photosynthesis is the biological process that plants and algae use to store solar energy in biomass. It is how all our food is made, and we would starve without it,” said Kramer, who is leading the grant with Ben Lucker with the PRL and Joe Weissman, Distinguished Scientific Associate at ExxonMobil...
Discovery of New Plant Switch Could Boost Crops, Biofuel Production
MSU Today
2015-04-15
The MSU-led team, headed by David Kramer, MSU Hannah Distinguished Professor in Photosynthesis and Bioenergetics, was able to show that one of these toxins, hydrogen peroxide, signals for the activation of an alternative photosynthetic pathway called cyclic electron flow, or CEF...
The Facebook of Plant Science
MSU Today
2015-01-21
The goal is to allow even citizen scientists to make research-quality measurements, said David Kramer, MSU Hannah Distinguished Professor in Photosynthesis and Bioenergetics. “We’ve built a platform that everyone can access through their cell phones,” he said. “We want to create a community that sees a 12-year-old student in China ask a question about a drought-resistant plant. Then we hope that hundreds of people answer, and not only the student in China is able to grow sustainable crops, but also a farmer in Africa could benefit from those insights.”...
Journal Articles (5)
Voltage-sensitive rhodol with enhanced two-photon brightness
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences2017 We have designed, synthesized, and applied a rhodol-based chromophore to a molecular wire-based platform for voltage sensing to achieve fast, sensitive, and bright voltage sensing using two-photon (2P) illumination. Rhodol VoltageFluor-5 (RVF5) is a voltage-sensitive dye with improved 2P cross-section for use in thick tissue or brain samples. RVF5 features a dichlororhodol core with pyrrolidyl substitution at the nitrogen center. In mammalian cells under one-photon (1P) illumination, RVF5 demonstrates high voltage ...
A shadow detector for photosynthesis efficiency
Journal of Theoretical Biology2017 Plants tolerate large variations in the intensity of the light environment by controlling the efficiency of solar to chemical energy conversion. To do this, plants have a mechanism to detect the intensity, duration, and change in light as they experience moving shadows, flickering light, and cloud cover. Sugars are the primary products of CO 2 fixation, a metabolic pathway that is rate limited by this solar energy conversion. We propose that sugar is a signal encoding information about the intensity, duration and change in the light ...
Comparing photosynthetic and photovoltaic efficiencies and recognizing the potential for improvement
American Association for the Advancement of Science2011 Comparing photosynthetic and photovoltaic efficiencies is not a simple issue. Although both processes harvest the energy in sunlight, they operate in distinctly different ways and produce different types of products: biomass or chemical fuels in the case of natural photosynthesis and nonstored electrical current in the case of photovoltaics. In order to find common ground for evaluating energy-conversion efficiency, we compare natural photosynthesis with present technologies for photovoltaic-driven electrolysis of water to produce hydrogen. Photovoltaic-driven electrolysis is the more efficient process when measured on an annual basis, yet short-term yields for photosynthetic conversion under optimal conditions come within a factor of 2 or 3 of the photovoltaic benchmark. We consider opportunities in which the frontiers of synthetic biology might be used to enhance natural photosynthesis for improved solar energy conversion efficiency.
The importance of energy balance in improving photosynthetic productivity
Plant Physiology2011 Current proposals to improve photosynthesis to meet our energy and food needs include the following: (1) improving the performance of Rubisco; (2) decreasing photorespiration by turning C3 plants into C4 plants, installing algal or cyanobacterial carbon-concentrating mechanisms into higher plant chloroplasts, or redesigning photorespiratory metabolism; and (3) adding new biosynthetic pathways to increase the flow of carbon into useful products, like starch or oils, etc. While introducing or modifying pathways for these processes will be an important step forward, it is important to note that these approaches may also substantially alter the energetic demands placed on photosynthesis. To successfully translate these modifications into enhanced photosynthesis requires that chloroplasts can meet these altered demands...
New fluorescence parameters for the determination of Q A redox state and excitation energy fluxes
Photosynthesis Research2004 A number of useful photosynthetic parameters are commonly derived from saturation pulse-induced fluorescence analysis. We show, that qP, an estimate of the fraction of open centers, is based on a pure ‘puddle’ antenna model, where each Photosystem (PS) II center possesses its own independent antenna system. This parameter is incompatible with more realistic models of the photosynthetic unit, where reaction centers are connected by shared antenna, that is, the so-called ‘lake’ or ‘connected units’ models. We thus introduce a new parameter, qL, based on a Stern–Volmer approach using a lake model, which estimates the fraction of open PS II centers.
