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Research Summary:
A major research interest of Jerry Brand is the mechanism of freezing damage in algal cells and processes that protect them from chilling and freezing damage. Studies are directed toward the development of improved processes for cryopreservation (freezing and storing for an indefinitely long period of time at liquid nitrogen temperature) of living algae.
These studies have led to the development of protocols to that have facilitated the successful cryopreservation of nearly 2/3 of the strains in the Culture Collection of Algae at the University of Texas. Jerry Brand studies metabolic processes in cyanobacteria that influence their physiological characteristics and ecological distribution. Research in this laboratory is directed toward characterization of a recently discovered cyanobacterium that produces multicellular “nodules” and is capable of dinitrogen fixation in the absence of heterocysts.
Additional work is directed toward nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria in microbial mats and methods that selectively inactivate or insert genes at specific sites in cyanobacterial genomes, using “Targetron” methodology. J. Brand interacts extensively with the community of scientists, engineers and business interests that is developing new commercial uses of algae, especially as a source of transportation fuel.
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Publications:
2010 Li, Z., Yu, J., Kim, K. and Brand, J. , Nitrogen fixation by a marine non-heterocystous cyanobacterium requires a heterotrophic bacterial consort., Environmental Microbiology
2009 Piasecki, B, Diller, K. and Brand, J. , Cryopreservation of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii: A cause of low viability at high cell density. , Cryobiology 58: 103-109
2009 Paik, M., Kim, H., Lee, J., Brand, J. and Kim, K. , Separation of triacylglycerols and free fatty acids in microalgae lipids by solid-phase extraction with sodium carbonate for separate fatty acid profiling analysis as tert-butyldimethylsilyl esters by gas chromatography., Journal of Chromatography A1216: 5917-5923
2009 Yu, J., Li, Z. and Brand, J. , Characterization of green algae isolated from infected human skin. , Phycological Research 57: 251-258
2008 Brand, J., Krogmann, D. and Patterson, C.O. , Jack Edgar Myers (1913-2006), and algal physiologist par excellence., Photosynth Res. 96: 9-14
2007 Li, Z. and Brand, J. , Leptolynghya nodulosa sp. nov. (Oscillatoriaceae), a subtropical marine cyanobacterium that produces a unique multicellular structure., Phycologia 46: 396-401
2005 Zhao, Y., Shi, Y., Zhao, W., Xu, H., Wang, X., Brown, N., Brand, J. and Zhao, J. , CcbP, a calcium-binding protein from Anabaena sp. PCC 7120, provides evidence that calcium ions regulate heterocyst differentiation, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 102: 5744-5748
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