Patrick McGinn
Postdoctoral Fellow

Department of Geosciences
M32 Guyot Hall
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08544

Phone: (609) 258-7438
E-Mail:

I completed my Ph.D. in 2003 in the lab of Drs. Murray Badger and Dean Price at the Australian National University in Canberra. At ANU, I investigated certain molecular and physiological aspects of the CO2-concentrating mechanism (CCM) in model freshwater cyanobacteria. My research has broadened in scope and is now concerned primarily with deepening our understanding of the potential consequences of increasing atmospheric CO2 on the activity and regulation CO2 and HCO3- assimilation in diatoms and marine cyanobacteria, arguably the two most important players in the marine carbon cycle. In order to begin to address this question however, we need a more thorough understanding of photosynthetic inorganic carbon acquistion at a biochemical and molecular level, in order to guide efforts aimed at modeling marine primary productivity in the years to come. To this end, under the direction of Francois Morel, I am currently applying detailed real-time PCR approaches to explore the potential for CO2 limitation and repletion to regulate the expression of genes involved in a C4 mode of carbon acquisition in the model diatom Thalassiosira pseudonana and other strains. This effort has been simplified with the recent publication of the entire genome sequence for this organism (http://genome.jgi-psf.org/).

Click here for a pdf file of my CV.