Stefan Rainer Schmollinger

# Titles
* Research Assistant Professor
* Strenkert lab member

# Research: Alga nutrient management
Our research aims to understand how photosynthetic algae balance and adjust to continuously changing nutrient supply in their natural habitats. While photosynthetic organisms can fix carbon from CO2 they still require a set of inorganic nutrients from their environment to assemble the building blocks for organic life.  Soil and aquatic habitats are dynamic environments where inhabitants constantly need to acclimate to, both, limitations and oversupply of critical nutrients. 

We are passionate about analyzing biological systems quantitatively and with single cell resolution. We use systems biology approaches to document the changes to transcript and protein abundance in response to changes in nutrient supply comprehensively. Additionally, we are utilizing several, quantitative ionomics methodologies to document elemental content with spatial and single cell resolution. We integrate physiological layers, like photosynthetic performance or growth, dependent on nutrient availability, and utilize CRISPR/Cpf1 and a highly-controlled photo-bioreactor system to generate specificity. This work represents a critical starting point, in which we wish to get a mechanistic understanding of algal metabolism and its ionome in a dynamic environment. The long-term goal of this research is to enable the engineering of critical primary producers to facilitate carbon sequestration, agricultural or biotechnological use of algae in a dynamic, nutrient-challenged environment - a mission with great relevance given the current changes to the climate. Currently we focus our efforts on the utilization of the macronutrient nitrogen and the trace element Iron in the photosynthetic alga Chlamydomonas.

## Iron utilization in the chloroplast
Iron is essential as a nutrient for photosynthetic organisms because of its broad function as a catalyst for enzymatic reactions. The role that trace elements have in general, but especially iron, cannot easily be replaced by other, organic catalysts, making these elements indispensable for life on Earth. Despite its abundance in nature, iron has limited bioavailability because of its insolubility in aquatic and soil environments, especially when oxygen is present. Therefore, photosynthesis often occurs in situations of iron-nutrition stress. The goal of this project is to visualize at the level of the chloroplast, and especially the photosynthetic apparatus, the impact of iron nutrition on primary production, photosynthetic energy distribution and carbon fixation with single cell resolution.

## Alga nitrogen use
Inorganic nitrogen is essential for the synthesis of the building blocks of protein and nucleic acids. Nitrogen is also a crucial nutrient for photosynthetic organisms, and its supply in the environment limits plant productivity in soil and in the oceans. Nitrogen is most abundant on Earth in the form of atmospheric N2, which can only be fixed by specialized bacteria, including in symbiosis with plants, or chemically via an especially energy intensive processes. Fertilizers are consequently expensive, increasingly so today as energy costs soar. Therefor there is considerable interest in understanding nitrogen metabolism and use efficiency in phototrophs, including algae that are used for biotechnological applications. We are working to understand the mechanisms of how algae manage their nitrogen demand and control its acquisition from the environment.

# Education
* Ph.D., Biology, University of Kaiserslautern

# Links
* [Google Scholar](https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=pO-r698AAAAJ&hl=en)