Award details

Denitrificatio n

Reference	BBS/E/J/41004051
Principal Investigator / Supervisor	Dr Robert Eady
Co-Investigators / Co-Supervisors	Professor David John Lowe, Dr Robert Sawers
Institution	John Innes Centre
Department	John Innes Centre Department
Funding type	Research
Value (£)	170,604
Status	Completed
Type	Institute Project
Start date	01/04/1997
End date	31/03/2001
Duration	48 months

Abstract

Denitrification is an intrinsic step in the nitrogen cycle, in which micro- organisms reduce nitrate in a stepwise manner via nitrite to form nitric oxide (NO), nitrous oxide (N2O) and dinitrogen. UK farmers spend 450M p.a. on nitrogenous fertiliser of which 25-50% is lost through leaching or denitrification. Nitrate appearing in drinking water has to be reduced to meet EU regulations either by the use of denitrifying bacteria or ion exchange treatment. The overall objective is to understand the denitrification pathway in the common soil microbe Alcaligenes xylosoidans. Current effort, utilising a wide variety of spectroscopic and kinetic techniques, mutagenesis and X-ray crystallography, is focussed on analysis of the structure and function of the copper- containing dissimilatory nitrite reductase (NiR) which catalyses a key step in this process since it is at this point that losses of fixed nitrogen from the soil to the atmosphere occur, on azurin its electron donor on cytochrome c? an avid NO binding protein of and on N2O reductase (NOR) which converts this greenhouse gas to dinitrogen.

Summary

unavailable

Committee	Closed Committee - Biomolecular Sciences (BMS)
Research Topics	X – not assigned to a current Research Topic
Research Priority	X – Research Priority information not available
Research Initiative	X - not in an Initiative
Funding Scheme	X – not Funded via a specific Funding Scheme

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