4 ms·

You got me thinking about incorporating silicon-based photosynthesis chemistry into plants. Making that work would be tricky, for sure.

• adrian_b 2y ago
  The solution is not incorporating photovoltaic cells into living plants. The most efficient way of making food and other complex organic molecules is to make artificial devices that would use solar panels and which would use the energy to capture both carbon dioxide and nitrogen from the air (possibly also water from the air humidity) and which would make ammonia and some very simple organic molecule. Whatever is produced with solar energy, could be used as food for some genetically modified fungi or other similar organisms (e.g. genetically modified parasitic plants). These genetically modified living organisms would perform all the complex enzymatic syntheses required to make food suitable for humans or any other complex organic substances of interest. Some time in the future it should become possible to create a fungus (or a parasitic plant) capable of growing not only mushrooms, but also bananas, wheat grains, chicken eggs, turkey thighs or whatever else one could want to harvest from such a culture. So the coupling between solar panels and some culture of living beings should be external, through food. This has the advantage that the surface would be occupied only by the solar panels and the associated chemical reactors that would store the solar energy into simple organic molecules and ammonia (possibly combined in a simple amino-acid like glycine), while making food could be done e.g. in underground facilities and only when needed and producing only whatever is in demand at a given time.