A project led by John Peters, chair of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma, has received a nearly $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Basic Energy Sciences.
A project led by John Peters, chair of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma, has received a nearly $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Basic Energy Sciences. He is studying the mechanisms for carbon dioxide fixation, an area of research exploring how to reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere that contributes to climate warming.
"This project meets two of DOE's modern energy priorities,” Peters said. “They want to understand how microbes capture carbon dioxide molecules and incorporate them into biomass in a different way than photosynthetic organisms. They also want to know how electrons are moved around in fuel production. In molecules associated with life – carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen – electrons have to be moved around to make these fuel molecules.”
In one part of Peters’ research, organisms use acetone and carbon dioxide as their sole food source to produce biomass. Another aspect of his research examines electron bifurcation, a process where pairs of electrons can be split in different ways to overcome certain thermodynamic barriers. Peters was part of a research group that recently received a Faraday Horizon Prize from the Royal Society of Chemistry for this research.
Read more at: University of Oklahoma
John Peters is the principal investigator of the project, “Novel microbial-based enzymatic CO2 fixation mechanisms: Conformational control of enzymatic reactivity.” (Photo Credit: University of Oklahoma)
