John F. Allen's Blog at jfallen.org

28th February 2020

Enroute to Bern

Filed under: Diary,Not extinct — John Allen @ 6:07 pm

River Oise near Danizy in Picardy.

Halenbrücke on the Aare.

25th March 2019

Put it to the People

Filed under: Diary,Not extinct — John Allen @ 4:41 am

23 March. At a rough guess, about twice the number of people who were at the March for a People’s Vote.

A long wait at the advertised starting point in Park Lane. A bottleneck into Piccadilly. We eventually turned into Green Park, eventually to meet our daughter, Sophie. Lunch in St. James’s Park and then to Parliament Square, still crowded long after the speeches has finished. In addition to the route of the march itself, many roads in the West End had been closed, apparently in response to unexpectedly large crowds.

31st December 2018

Eleanor leaves for Bristol University

Filed under: Diary,Not extinct — John Allen @ 6:03 pm

Among a large class of 2018, on September 22nd Bristol University received our youngest daughter, Eleanor, to read Zoology. We wish her well. It’s a great place, and she is a multi-talented young lady.

12th August 2018

16th International Symposium on Phototrophic Prokaryotes

Filed under: About science,Not extinct — John Allen @ 9:49 am

16th International Symposium on Phototrophic Prokaryotes

University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, 5 – 9 August 2018

This was a fine meeting with many reports of first-rate new research. My own contribution was entitled Two-component redox regulatory control in the origins of oxygen evolution, cyanobacteria, and chloroplasts. Some photos… The first is a remarkable UBC memorial. The last is the location of the banquet, in the Museum of Anthropology.

15th July 2018

Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution (SMBE) 2018 Yokohama

Filed under: About science,Diary,Not extinct — John Allen @ 7:34 pm

7th May 2018

Regulation of Photosynthetic Electron Transport

Filed under: Diary,Not extinct — John Allen @ 5:22 pm

I was surprised and pleased to find my simple graphic on the cover of the journal Physiologia Plantarum.

The special issue.

Why we need to know the structure of phosphorylated chloroplast light‐harvesting complex II

Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

25th April 2018

The conception of Queen Mary, University of London | By Fanis Missirlis

Filed under: About universities,Not extinct — John Allen @ 9:26 am

The conception of Queen Mary, University of London

Quoting “ALL SORTS AND CONDITIONS OF MEN” by Walter Besant.

There was so much to cherish, and to maintain. Let us hope for future reconception.

18th June 2017

Two celebrations on one day

Filed under: Diary,Not extinct — John Allen @ 10:21 pm

Today is our wedding anniversary. This year it happens to be fathers’ day, too.
To love and be loved.
How lucky am I.

12th October 2016

Enhancing photosynthesis | Royal Society Discussion Meeting

Filed under: About science,Diary,Not extinct — John Allen @ 1:25 pm

Enhancing photosynthesis in crop plants: targets for improvement

October 10 and 11, 2016.

Contributors presented interesting new findings, approaches and techniques, while the outlook and prospect of “enhancing photosynthesis” seems not to have changed significantly over many years. Crop plants rely totally on the same photosynthetic mechanisms as those used by all plants, and some bacteria. I like the idea of tinkering with these machines to see what might be done. Totally unexpected results, rather than targets, will be the most useful. Important discoveries and new possibilities always arise from a problem in understanding, and from thinking of ways to solve it. There were definitely some important problems, good ideas, and experimental tests freely reported at the meeting. Some were very good indeed. I shall comment on these. It was unfortunate that the meeting opened with an unscheduled ten minutes intelligible only to those already aware of some sort of bid for funding, thus excluding most of those present.  I was happy to be in the majority on this.

There is progress – resting always on the possibility of ideas being open to examination and criticism.

17th September 2016

The 13th International Colloquium on Endocytobiology and Symbiosis, Kyoto

Filed under: Diary,Not extinct — John Allen @ 4:13 pm

The 13th International Colloquium on Endocytobiology and Symbiosis was held in Kyoto from September 10 to 14, 2016. A fine poster advertised the colloquium.

The organiser was Junichi Obokata of Kyoto Prefectoral University. My painstakingly generous local host was Mitsumasa Hanaoka of Chiba University. I am so grateful to them both, as to the colloquium staff and fellow participants.

At Mitsumasa’s invitation I gave a seminar in his laboratory in Chiba, immediately after getting off the train from Narita airport on 8 September, and a longer and better version on 9 September at Kyoto University. Both seminars were entitled Mitochondria, ageing and separate sexes, and elicited excellent questions.

My plenary lecture at the colloquium itself was an account of progress with a consistent theme over a number of years and in different laboratories, countries, and universities, including recent results published in 2016. This lecture was entitled Why chloroplasts and mitochondria retain their own genomes and genetic systems: Co-location for Redox Regulation of gene expression.

The full programme of the Colloquium is available, and includes abstracts.

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