New Faculty Profile: Chris Gisriel

Photo of Prof. Christopher GisrielThe Department of Biochemistry welcomes Chris Gisriel, who joined the faculty on August 19, 2024. The Gisriel Lab will focus on fundamental aspects of photosynthetic metabolism.

Gisriel began his undergraduate studies at Arizona State University after completing a tour of duty in Afghanistan with the U.S. Army. “When I started in college, I wasn’t exactly sure what I was interested in studying. I thought I might want to be a doctor,” recalls Gisriel, who joined a lab to gain research experience for his medical school applications. “But then I fell in love with research.”

Both as an undergraduate researcher and as a doctoral student at Arizona State University, Gisriel studied chemical processes and structures involved in photosynthesis. “I really appreciate basic research — research that gets at the fundamental questions, especially about bioenergetics. And, really, what’s more fundamental than photosynthesis? It evolved 3.5 billion years ago, making it one of the oldest metabolic processes to have evolved on Earth, and it serves as the gateway for nearly all the energy in our biosphere.”

Gisriel studies membrane protein complexes called photosystems, which plants and photosynthetic bacteria use to harvest and process energy from the sun. He was intrigued by how structures and functions of photosystems, such as their abilities to access different light wavelengths, are conserved across most plants and have evolved to adapt to life in other organisms, such as cyanobacteria, which live in environments where the full spectrum of visible light isn’t available.

After focusing on the biochemical complexities of anoxygenic photosynthesis and technique development in X-ray crystallography through his Ph.D. and a postdoctoral position at Arizona State University, Gisriel’s research took a new approach when he joined Yale University’s Department of Chemistry as a postdoctoral researcher. “Inorganic chemists and physical chemists — they ask very different sets of questions than you would hear from a biochemist,” says Gisriel. “I came in with expertise in biochemistry, and I learned a lot from my colleagues in the department who took different approaches.” At Yale, Gisriel explored the relationships between the photosynthetic structures that he was studying and their light-driven catalytic activities.

Now, using cryo-electron microscopy and cryo-electron tomography to solve and understand the structures that make up photosystem complexes, Gisriel’s lab in the UW–Madison Department of Biochemistry will continue to study the diversity of photosynthesis and light harvesting strategies. His lab will also explore the chemical processes by which water is split and oxygen is released into the atmosphere during photosynthesis.

“We want to visualize and understand the structures of photosystem complexes to reveal chemical information about photosynthetic processes,” explains Gisriel. “How are photosystems assembled, how are chromophores bound to protein subunits, we’ll be interested in understanding how all of this works together.”

Gisriel, who was hired as part of the Wisconsin Research, Innovation and Scholarly Excellence Initiative (RISE-EARTH theme), is enthusiastic about ways his research and collaborations will be shaped by the Department of Biochemistry’s home in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. “Our hope is to use biology, as it exists in nature, as a template for things like creating better synthetic solar fuel catalysts and developing crops that can use unique wavelengths of light,” says Gisriel.

The Gisriel Lab is ready to hit the ground running. Joining Gisriel’s lab are two research scientists and two postdoctoral researchers. For Gisriel, research is a community effort. “When we work alone, we miss the diversity of perspectives, techniques, and approaches that additional researchers bring to the process. We just don’t have the ability to look as critically at our own plans, ideas, and results,” says Gisriel. He is looking forward to graduate students joining his team and contributing their own novel ideas and trajectories. “The Department of Biochemistry is already a fantastic community and I am excited to build a community and collaborations in my lab, in the department, and at the university.”