Accordingly, in addition to Cl− uptake, Ross measured photosynthetic oxygen evolution at the giant cell surface and ATP levels in the cells. It is fair to say that Ross was a catalyst during the transition of Alex’s research from the electrophysiology of giant algal cells to photosynthesis. Proteasomal inhibitors Indeed, at one of the weekly lab meetings, Ross talked about a recent paper from HT Witt’s group concerning the use of the electrochromic shift (ECS) to indicate the transmembrane electric potential difference. Alex was at first sceptical,

but soon became enthusiastic about the implications for new experimental techniques (see below). Having whetted his appetite in photosynthesis, Ross went as a postdoctoral fellow to David Walker’s lab, newly relocated to Sheffield University. Subsequently, Ross became Professor at Wollongong University. I started in RG-7388 purchase 1972 under Alex’s check details supervision after an undergraduate degree in Tasmania University and an Honours degree project supervised by Bruce Scott, himself a contemporary of Alex and a former student of McAulay. In 1973, I was

joined in the lab by Michael Groves, a physics graduate from The University of New England. Michael was set to work on delayed chlorophyll fluorescence emission in the microsecond time range. He constructed a pulsed argon-ion laser for this purpose, since the lab was not able to afford a commercial laser. Afterwards Michael went onto work in medical diagnostics. Commencing work on photosynthesis meant that

the laboratory had to acquire suitable equipment almost from scratch. Over a period of time, the resourceful new Alex engaged the mechanical and electronics workshops to come up with home-built equipment, e.g. an absorbance kinetic spectrophotometer, a phase-locked millisecond delayed light luminometer, and a fluorescence detection system for trans-thylakoid ΔpH determination using fluorescent amines, complete with data acquisition using a PDP-11 computer. This was considerable advance from the early days when our determination of proton uptake by thylakoids suspended in a weak buffer solution suffered interference by a regular signal from Adelaide Airport! I fondly remember “Prof” coming to the lab each Saturday, so that he and I could make parallel (uninterrupted) measurements on the same preparation of thylakoids, his radio tuned to a classical music station. Given his interest in electrical properties in plants, Alex set me to work on the “high-energy state” of envelope-free chloroplasts. An initial topic for investigation was the light-induced redistribution of ions. Alex had predicted the magnitudes of the redistribution of ions (influx of Mg2+ and K+/Na+ and efflux of Cl−) across the thylakoid membrane in response to proton deposition in the thylakoid lumen (Chow and Hope 1976).