Florence Mus

Florence Mus is a Research Professor at Washington State University in the Department of Plant Pathology, College of Agricultural, Human and Natural Resource Sciences (CAHNRS). Her work focuses on biological nitrogen fixation and CO2 fixation mechanisms in bacteria, particularly using Azotobacter vinelandii and Xanthobacter autotrophicus as models for engineering synthetic symbioses in crops.

• Ph.D. from University Aix-Marseille II (France) in 2005

Research Interests

Dr. Mus investigates:

• Engineering synthetic plant-bacteria symbioses for nitrogen delivery to crops
• Mechanisms of oxygen protection and electron transfer in nitrogenase systems
• Structural and biochemical characterization of novel CO2 fixation pathways
• Coenzyme M biosynthesis in non-methanogenic bacteria
• Regulatory networks controlling nitrogen fixation efficiency

Publication Trends

Recent work emphasizes structural biology of nitrogenase systems (2024-2025), cofactor specificity in bacterial carboxylases, and metabolic modeling of diazotroph adaptation to environmental stresses.