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I wonder how hard it would be to do this in ocean algae and phytoplankton and it that could fight global warming.
by afarrell 12y ago
I wonder how hard it would be to do this in ocean algae and phytoplankton and it that could fight global warming.
- iwwr 12y agoThe pathway crosses several cells, one in which CO2 is filtered from an oxygen atmosphere and another anoxic stage where the CO2 is fixed again, this time to produce sugars which plants actually need. The two stage fixation prevents something called 'photorespiration' where existing oxygen can 'steal' some of the rubisco mollecules which would otherwise associate with CO2. So this is a multicellular process and could not be adapted to algae.
- Blahah 12y agoMany algae already use a carbon concentrating mechanism [0] similar to C4. It works in a similar way, by concentrating CO2 around RuBisCO, the key enzyme that creates sugar from CO2. In C4 plants, the RuBisCO is kept in a wax-enclosed cell, and the CO2 is pumped in. In algae, which are single-celled, the RuBisCO aggregates together into a bubble-like structure called a pyrenoid [1], and a high CO2 concentration is maintained inside. 0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthesis#Carbon_concentrating_mechanisms http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthesis#Carbon_concentra... 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrenoid http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrenoid