Achievement

Biological nitrogen fixation is one of the most important biochemical processes to evolve in biology and results in the fixation of gaseous atmospheric nitrogen to organic forms necessary for building macromolecules. IGERT student Trinity Hamilton recently completed studies directed towards understanding structural characteristics of the nitrogenase enzyme complex. The segmented accumulation of nif structural gene mRNA in Azotobacter vinelandii represents an exciting finding and was recently reported in the Journal of Bacteriology. Additional findings reported in Trinity’s Ph.D. work (Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry) in partnership with the Astrobiology Research Center (MSU) and the IGERT Program include transcriptional profiling of nitrogen fixation in A. vinelandii, (also published in J. Bact.), high-temperature biological nitrogen fixation (in press), and the distribution of chlorophototrophs in thermal features of YNP.