Animal, vegetable and mineral: The remarkable physiologies of oceanic biomineralizing phytoplankton

Professor Colin Brownlee, Marine Biological Association (MBA)

Colin Brownlee is a Lankester Research Fellow at the Marine Biological Association (MBA) and Professor Emeritus at the School of Ocean and Earth Sciences, University of Southampton. He served as Director of the MBA (2007-2017) and was Professor of Ocean and Earth Sciences, Southampton (2011-2021).

Following postdoctoral research in plant and fungal sciences in Sheffield and Liverpool, Colin moved to Plymouth and the MBA where he established a programme focusing on single-cell studies of brown algae and phytoplankton to understand the cellular mechanisms that give rise to developmental pattern, cell growth and responses to environmental fluctuations. Working as an MBA Senior Research Fellow and NERC Individual Merit researcher, mainly funded by UK and European Research Councils he established many collaborations both in the UK and internationally. His research on phytoplankton cell biology has continued to the present, combining single cell biophysics, imaging, and molecular and genomics approaches as well as undertaking research vessel-based studies of natural populations. In addition to his research activities, Colin has sat on and chaired a wide range of UK Research Council, research institute and international research committees.

Animal, vegetable and mineral: The remarkable physiologies of oceanic biomineralizing phytoplankton

The eukaryotic, single-celled biomineralizing phytoplankton include the diatoms that produce silica cell walls and coccolithophores that produce external coverings of intricately sculpted calcite scales. Together, they contribute substantially to ocean productivity and biogeochemical cycling. While both groups are photosynthetic, genomic studies reflect their evolutionary origins, revealing roughly equal proportions of “animal-like” and “plant-like” genes. In this talk I will explore how this gives rise to some unique physiological properties, including animal-like electrical excitability, and intracellular signalling mechanisms. I will also explore how coccolithophores have recruited particular types of membrane transporters in a unique fashion to accommodate the exceptional fluxes of substrates and products needed to sustain the calcification reaction inside the cell. This research is helping us to understand how coccolithophores will respond to future changes in ocean chemistry and has also revealed novel classes of ion channels that may have significant biomedical application in development of gene therapies for ion channel-related disorders.

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