Biochemical Journal Young Investigator Award winner

Gergely Nagy

Gergely Nagy obtained his degree in Physics in 2006 at the Eötvös Loránd University (Budapest). Currently he is participating in a shared Ph.D./education system between Hungary and France, in Dr László Rostás group at the Research Institute for Solid State Physics and Optics, Budapest and at the Institut-Laue Langevin, Grenoble, under the supervision of Prof. Judith Peters and Dr. Peter Timmins. His thesis focuses on the study of structure and structural flexibility of photosynthetic membranes of vascular plants by neutron-scattering techniques, a research project conducted in collaboration with Dr. Gyõzõ Garab and his coworkers (Biological Research Center, Szeged). They identified the SANS (small-angle neutron scattering) signals originating from the stroma and granum thylakoid membranes and determined their repeat distances in isolated intact thylakoid membranes. Our experiments have revealed that the stroma membranes exhibit an unexpectedly high structural flexibility: large ΔpH-dependent, light-induced reversible reorganizations, monitored with a time resolution of a few seconds; under the same conditions, the grana exhibit only minor changes. These results demonstrate that SANS is suitable for recording rapid reorganizations in highly organized natural multilamellar systems. By using incoherent neutron scattering they also study the dynamic properties of Photosystem II membrane fragments and the supercomplex of Photosystem I