Eduard Windenbach (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München)
Eduard Windenbach's Master thesis was awarded with the Prize for the Best Plant Science Master Thesis, which was carried out at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich (LMU) in the year 2024 with the title:
Characterization of chloroplasts energy flux via NAD(P)H pools
Windenbach developed novel, elegant assays that enable the determination of co-enzyme specificity of the electron transfer in chloroplasts via simultaneous reaction.
Chloroplasts of Arabidopsis thaliana possess two malate dehydrogenases (MDHs), which were previously assumed to act in separated diurnal phases. The MDH isoforms utilize either NADPH/NADP+ or NADH/NAD+ for their reaction and allow an independent energy flux from the respective coenzyme pools. Windenbach developed an enzyme assay that enabled the simultaneous measurement of the activity of both malate dehydrogenases. The coenzyme derivative Ti-NADH was used in the measurement, which absorbs at a different wavelength than NAD(P)H and allowed for simultaneous measurement of plNAD-MDH and NADP-MDH activity. Here it was shown that C3 plants have a higher activity for the light-independent plNAD-MDH. Furthermore, by using in-gel assays, the presence of different plNAD-MDH complexes and their activity was shown. All in all, the work makes an important contribution to a better understanding of the energy flow across the NAD(P)H pools of the chloroplast and provides new insights into an alternative role of plastid MDHs.
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Eduard Windenbach conducted this work at the LMU Chair of Plant Biochemistry and Physiology in the working group of Prof. Dr. Hans-Henning Kunz.