Lots of people are excited about the idea of using plants to help us draw down some of the excess carbon dioxide we’ve been pumping into the atmosphere. It would be nice to think that we could reforest our way out of the mess we’re creating, but recent studies have indicated there’s simply not enough productive land for this to work out.
One alternative might be to get plants to take up carbon dioxide more efficiently. Unfortunately, the enzyme that incorporates carbon dioxide into photosynthesis, called RUBISCO, is remarkably inefficient. So, a team of researchers in Taiwan decided to try something new—literally. They put together a set of enzymes that added a new-to-nature biochemical cycle to plants that let it incorporate carbon far more efficiently. The resulting plants grew larger and incorporated more carbon.
I can see a super productive version of algae being released into the oceans to solve our co2 problem.
And I wonder how long until the vast majority of the biosphere would collapse because of it.
What could go wrong
Dunno, weed on steroids being even more proficient at outcompeting local florae?
Regardless of the lipid accumulation, they didn’t comment at all in the arstechnica piece about how the energetics are different 2ATP per COH3- in McG vs 1.5 ATP per COH3- in Calvin and where the glycolate is coming from. The whole point was to comment on RUBISCO inefficiency which they did not do, and the McG pathway consumes more ATP per carbon fixed, which is kind of against the idea of fixing more carbon in the first place. I’m not sure how truly amazing this article is, given the energetics, the lack of comment on stoich comparisons, and the glaring error of not commenting at all about the source of the glycolate.
Honestly doesn’t seem like a terrible idea. Yeah reducing our emissions is better but frankly I do not have faith that is going to happen, certainly not to the extent that would be needed.
Of course we are playing with fire here, but if we can also ensure these plants are bad at naturally propagating then I guess we should be ok.
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Reducing emissions alone may not be enough for the survival of most existing flora and fauna.
The problem is that it will take an extended period of time for nature to pull all of the existing CO2 back out of the atmosphere. We may not survive long enough. The existing plants and whatnot that do it may not survive long enough to recover once its done.
yeah i know. but we could have dealt with it before it got this bad.
i feel uneasy at using the lowest cost possible solution (because we know that’s what’s gonna be) to compensate for it in our biosphere. i fear for the possible undiscovered side effects of messing with our flora’s genetics in a hurry to keep the planet cool.
Believe it or not, I am right there with you on this. There is little to no way that I can see to do this without leaving most plants facing more competition than they can possibly cope with. Maybe start with islands that already have low plant biodiversity, and try to splice as many of each variety of plant there as possible at once? … but that’s all I’ve got.
Spliced Oceanic Algeas would probably just fill the oceans to the point of killing everything else in them.
