Our newest paper on photosynthetic energy use was accepted yesterday in Photosynthesis Research. Former graduate student Nerissa Fisher (MS 2015) discovered that under very low light availability, diatoms shift their metabolism in favor of very short ATP generating pathways that circumvent carbon intermediates. These results suggest that this type of pathway gating facilitates the remarkably high efficiencies with which diatoms convert light energy into biomass, especially in low light (Fisher and Halsey, 2016). The paper can be found here:
Mechanisms that increase the growth efficiency of diatoms in low light