Professor Jian-Ren Shen is recognized for his pioneering
research on clarifying the fundamental reaction mechanism that governs
photosynthetic water splitting, a process with fundamental importance in
understanding how oxygenic photosynthetic organisms, such as plants, use energy
from sunlight, water, and CO2 to survive.
"I first started research on photosynthetic proteins in
the beginning of my doctorate project," says Shen. "Our findings
published in 2011 were based on x-ray diffraction experiments of large, high
quality single crystal of so-called 'photosystem II' (PS II) at Japan's
SPring-8 synchrotron radiation facility at Harima. The ability to produce large
sized, single crystals of PS II, an extremely large membrane-protein complex,
was critical for determining the crystalline structure of this protein complex
to a resolution of 1.9 Angstroms. These results are the culmination of 20 years
of my life spent on the development and improvement of the process to produce
such large crystals."