Leonelli Research Group

Photosynthesis Engineering at UIUC

Research Mission

The Leonelli research group works towards improving photosynthesis in crops and algae to provide sustainable food and energy sources in our ever-changing world. Key to accomplishing this goal is our continued commitment to developing new methods to identify and characterize diverse molecular components to add to our biological toolkit by combining synthetic biology and systems biology approaches.

Improving the Balance between Light Harvesting and Photoprotection

Plants experience a dynamic range of light intensities and light quality throughout the day. One research question the group addresses is how to best optimize a plant's response to these fluctuations at different layers of the canopy through engineering changes to xanthophyll cycling.

Engineering more durable algal strains

Algae are some of the most interesting and diverse organisms out there. Their potential for phyto-remediation, nutrient reclamation from waste water, alternative energy generation and bioproduction has barely been scratched. Our group works on domesticating non-model algae and developing more robust algal strains that can tolerate multiple stresses.

Developing New Tools for studying Transcription Factors in Plants

Understanding gene regulation in crops is often hampered by the time and resources needed to generate transgenic lines in intractable systems. We are developing new methods using transient expression and heterologous systems to create high-throughput assays to determine transcription factor targets in sorghum, maize, and Setaria sp.

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