Dr Daniel Canniffe MBiolSci, PhD

Personal Statement

My group's research is aimed at improving the efficiency of photosynthesis by enhancing energy capture in underutilised regions of the solar spectrum. We use molecular/synthetic biology approaches to manipulate pigment biosynthetic pathways for the production of non-native or novel (bacterio)chlorophyll and carotenoid molecules, and to engineer new combinations of these pigments in bacterial protein complexes, with the long-term aim of creating new organisms for harvesting and trapping solar energy. We are also interested in the evolution of oxygen tolerance (and aerobic respiration), driven by the change in atmospheric gas balance at the onset of oxygenic photosynthesis.

I received an undergraduate Master's degree in Biochemistry and Genetics from the University of Sheffield, where I stayed to study for a Ph.D. with Prof. C. Neil Hunter FRS. I received a Marie Curie Global Fellowship from the European Commission to work with Prof. Donald A. Bryant at Penn State University, and I joined the University of Liverpool's Department of Functional and Comparative Genomics in 2019, and moved to Biochemistry, Cell and Systems Biology in 2020.