The Path to Thioredoxin and Redox Regulation in Chloroplasts

After a brief discussion of my graduate work at Duke University, I describe a series of investigations on redox proteins at the University of California, Berkeley. Starting with ferredoxin from fermentative bacteria, the Berkeley research fostered experiments that uncovered a pathway for fixing CO2 in bacterial photosynthesis. The carbon work, in turn, opened new vistas, including the discovery that thioredoxin functions universally in regulating the Calvin-Benson cycle in oxygenic photosynthesis. These experiments, which took place over a 50-year period, led to the formulation of a set of biological principles and set the stage for research demonstrating a role for redox in the regulation of previously unrecognized processes extending far beyond photosynthesis.