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Scientists discover first nitrogen fixing organelle
- airstrike 2y agoSee also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40101290 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40101290 for more discussion (although IMHO this here is the better link)
- advisedwang 2y agoNo doubt we'll see this transplanted into GM crops for reduced fertilizer need.
- throwup238 2y agoMaybe we'll make some progress in human genetic engineering and get it in us too. We'd be able to eliminate the need for B3 vitamins!
- spacephysics 2y agoI’ll let other people try that out, then in 20 years we’ll do the classic “well sh/t, messing with this actually* also messes that up. Whoops!”
- andenacitelli 2y agoWell I guess we need to figure out how to regression test humans then!
- TaylorAlexander 2y agoIn fact back to the original comment we’re finding out that shoving chemicals and GM crops in to complex ecosystems messes a lot of stuff up too.
- cellis 2y agoIVG + gene editing, we're already there!
- egberts1 2y agoOr worse, multiple faster than algaes and sucking up all the Nitrogen from thr air.
- yxhuvud 2y agoDo you realise 70% of the atmosphere is nitrogen? We will not run out of it.
- agos 2y agomake that 78%
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoRemoving the nitrogen bottleneck would let them capture carbon faster. Given our predicament I'd say we should take all the help we get.
- gjytfhbfd 2y agoRemove too much carbon however and the plants die. We don't want a Great Decarbonification Event.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoDecaying plants emit carbon. The extra nitrogen would just be changing is the length of the give-your-carbon-back-to-the-atmosphere queue. It's negative feedback: stable.
- adastra22 2y agoNitrogen is inert. Even if you could run out of N2 (unlikely), it would have no effect.
- gitanovic 2y agoThat's wrong, the fact that is inert doesn't mean it's useless If you remove all nitrogen from atmosphere, there WILL be consequences
- adrianN 2y agoSince we spend a couple percent of our total energy consumption just on turning nitrogen into fertilizer, anything that reduces our dependence would be awesome for the climate.
- sojuz151 2y agoI don't think so. Biological nitrogen fixation is far too inefficient for this to make sense. Deceased in yield would be too big tfor this to make sense To give some numbers, just the fixation takes 5.4 more energy, and photosynthesis is 6 times less efficient than solar panels. Moving to biological fixation would also increase water and pesticide usage
- vikramkr 2y agoEh, that's really hard to do and fertilizer is cheap you just zap some air with electricity and You're chilling. Plus legumes have the better version figured out imo - symbiotic bacteria instead of having to support a whole new organelle.
- ChrisArchitect 2y ago[dupe] Some more discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40011438 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40011438
- gjvc 2y ago[flagged]
- natpalmer1776 2y ago…did you write a script to enumerate all of this man’s [dupe] comments and post this reply?
- gjvc 2y agonope. manually.
- natpalmer1776 2y agoI mean, that's dedication I suppose.
- justinclift 2y agoThanks. :)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- dzink 2y agoUsing this to reduce the need for fertilizer would be awesome, but the engineer in me has to ask “What could possibly go wrong”. Interstellar showed one scenario. A nitrogen absorbing crop-blight or species out-evolving out food crops and overtaking them. With far more fuel the odds would be in favor of species that can consume nitrogen, and how do you keep those at bay when it happens?
- ctrw 2y agoThis has been going on for 100m years. I doubt we are in any urgent danger.
- 2four2 2y agoSo have mass extinction events.
- mikewarot 2y ago"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." Albert Allen Bartlett If there is even a 0.001% chance of an organism with this artificially tacked on to it getting in to the wild, the experiment is not worth anything to be potentially learned from it. It could cause our starvation well before we could respond effectively.
- RamiAwar 2y agoReminds me of this ancient plant that produces its own fertilizer from Nitrogen with bacteria https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/08/amaizeballs/567140/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/08/amaizeba...
- vikramkr 2y agoAlso legumes!
- kkylin 2y agoPrimary sources: [1] https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(24)00182-X.pdf https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(24)00182-X.pdf [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38603509/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38603509/ The first is open access.