Mutant Plants to Stop Global Warming

Global warming may have met its match. In research recently completed at Emory University School of Medicine, scientists have discovered a mutant enzyme that could enable plants to use and convert carbon dioxide more quickly and effectively remove more greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere.

A 2004 report by the National Science Foundation estimates that atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations remained steady at between 200 and 280 parts per million for thousands of years, but that carbon dioxide levels have risen dramatically since the Industrial Revolution of the 1800s, leading to 380 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere today.

For decades, scientists have struggled to engineer something that would more quickly convert carbon dioxide. Our attempts have primarily focused on mutating specific amino acids in an enzyme called RuBisCO, and then seeing if the change affected carbon dioxide conversion. Because of RuBisCO's structural complexity, the mutations that we're looking for have taken a while to develop.

but develop they did~

"We decided to do what nature does, but at a much faster pace." Dr. Matsumura (a member of the team) says.

We used "directed evolution".

"Essentially we're using evolution as a tool to engineer the protein."

Because E. coli does not normally participate in photosynthesis or carbon dioxide conversion, it does not usually carry the RuBisCO enzyme and so it made a good subject for the study.

In this study, our team added the genes encoding RuBisCO and a helper enzyme to E. coli, enabling it to change carbon dioxide into consumable energy. We then randomly mutated the RuBisCO gene. and were successful~

"These mutations caused a 500 percent increase in RuBisCO expression," Dr. Matsumura reports; "We are excited because such large changes could potentially lead to faster plant growth. These results also suggest that the enzyme is evolving in our laboratory in the same way that it did in nature."

Yea for directed evolution

(and for turning a six week grow into 5.6 days)

 

the faster plant growth would be good for food production but as for curing global warming, i can hardling believe that.... cutting down on emissions and finding alternatives would be a far better choice....also as there are more ocean space then land, seeding with iron to increase single cell algae would be a much better way to increase co2 absorbtion.....IMHO

 

One study produced a way to change the balance of our fulcrum by 500%.

you can't get better than that.

and this is the enablement of a passive individual to increase production on our behalf.

vs

giving carte blanche to an aggressively oriented colonizer like algae. if they had all the food they could use, it might give us a miracle for sure; like maybe the ability to walk on water (cause it'd be solidified from all the algae).

And if youi want to cut down on emissions, Yea. but do we need to do something about the extra stuff that is already up there?

and you're right that there can be a lot to understand. But this is a good idea because it makes better plants. in my opinion. hell, i like greenhouses and i know how to swim

 

well single cell algae are the bases of the food chain in the ocean ....we are not talking about pond scum....more phytoplankton means more fish ..more fish means more food for humans.....a double pay off....phytoplankton already absorb 30-50% of the co2 produced on the planet increasing the nutrients will improve that....

and the fact that this geneticaly engineer plant will most likely be patented so lets wait on the saint hood .....and what will they geneticall engineer all of the plants on the planet?...increasing the co2 aborbtion of a few crop plants is a drop in the bucket....most likely they are making big claims so the grant money keeps flowing....

 

Hey Cheez-wiz, how much fish do you eat?

ha ha (but seriously, do you?)

and by the way, my plants are "saints" without any bestowment from you, thanks anyway.

and Yea. fish are going to respirate what?


i guess there will be no 5.6 day grow for you, eh?

 

Allright! Go Emory! Sounds good, hope it works

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/...0907.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/04/09/ixworld.html

 

Awesome, maybe we could recolonize the earth with massive jungles??

 

i want one of those plants!!!!!!!!


... i wonder if i can smoke it:>
He's coming for you. (thats funny as hell.)

 

Sounds like a good idea. I am wondering, though, how effective this will be over the longterm. Do you have any articles I can read on the subject, Cakes?

Cheers,

Jess.

 

global warming, a misleading name for a real phenomina if there ever was one, will stop two or three decades AFTER we STOP using combustion to generate energy and propell transportation, unless really end of the world scale population implosion happens first, and even then either way, global shifts in weather paterns due to mid ocean warming due to ..., well ok, it is easier to just call it global warming, well end only after the momentum currently still being fed into has stopped being fed into it and been stopped for at least a decade and probably several.

scape goat myracales aren't going to get us of the hook of natural environmental reality. all plants do of course turn carbon compounds back into breathable oxygen and other useful products. that's where the air we breath comes from. all of it.

some plant that does what plants do only better, well that's great, but nothing is going to get us out of responsibility and the consiquences of trying to keep doing what we're familiar with because we're familiar with it, instead of actualy implimenting alternatives to doing so. environmentaly sustainable alternatives.

and there is really only one, and that is to dump WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY less carbon into the atmosphere and oceans. and i don't mean a 5% reduction or a 15% reduction but more like a 95 to 98% reduction. and that can only come about by ceasing to use combustion for ANYTHING other then home heating and cooking.

=^^=
.../\...

 

I read that the organisms living inside plants (and elsewhere) are the ones actually responsible for creating the atmosphere as we know it (cyanobacteria, a.k.a. chloroplasts, a.k.a. blue-green algae).

Irregardless of the debating I did above, I gotta tell you, the whole "existance/life" situation has got me more than just a little puzzled.

for instance, the original post talks about RuBisCo. In the trade journals it is repeatedly called a protein or an enzyme and yet it appears from their language that it also has it's own DNA.

wierd stuff is happening around here to say the least

and i DO believe in 'miracle' cures, they are happening everyday
(YEA! to a 5.6 day grow)

here's an expanded version of the article I posted, it's also in layman terms~ http://www.emory.edu/EMORY_REPORT/erarchive/2006/February/February%2013/S&Rglobalwarming.htm

there is a link to the article the scientists published in a trade journal (Protein Engineering and Design); they use specific technical terms~

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=16423843

Of course we are right to think of practical applications. And actually, I do agree that advertising this enzyme as being a cure for "global warming" is huge hype. And as to whether we will put it into widescale use? well, maybe not, but all things are possible, and often they happen quickly (did you know that 70% of the tobacco sold today has an implanted gene?) There IS a HECK of a lot of research being done on the RuBisCo gene, btw. It looks like they are researching it for many reasons, but really, I know very little about this stuff.

As to global warming..I gotta say that I think we'll be fine. I'm not saying that we won't experience change, but I think that even with (the potential) change, humans will come through it.

Recent figures show that most of the gasses are still being produced and that International goals are not being met, but we do see a cap on our o3 (ozone)production at ground level and that is a major source of pollution that actually harms humans.

There is a lot of data and some major models that conjecture about possible scenarios. Just YAHOO global warming and related terms. The United Sates Environmental Protection Agency has a bundle of figures and info including ways for private citizens to save money/save energy/recycle/stay safe, etc.
www.epa.gov

I thought this passage was kind of interesting:

"A variety of measurements demonstrate that CO2 has varied substantially during Earth's history, reaching levels between three and nine times pre-industrial levels of carbon dioxide prior to 50 million years ago. During the periods of hypothesized high carbon dioxide concentrations, there are strong indicators of warmth (although many different factors have contributed to climate change during Earth's history). These indicators include warm deep-sea temperatures and abundant life within the Arctic Circle. There are also some records of abrupt warming (thousands of years) in Earth's history that may be related to atmospheric greenhouse concentrations, which caused significant perturbations to the Earth system. The global temperature increases determined for some of these warm periods exceed future projections from all climate models for the next century. These changes are associated with some extinctions, and both the periods of warmth and abrupt transitions are associated with the large-scale redistribution of species. However, a substantial biosphere is evident (i.e., no catastrophic impact tending toward wholesale extinctions) even with substantially higher CO2 concentrations than those postulated to occur in response to human activities."