2022-03-20 12:29:56
This week my curiosity has been struck by the news of the discovery of a new species of bacteria that could help to mitigate the effects of climate change and thus save the planet from the plague that we humans suppose. I couldn’t help but keep parking the Quilo Vintage one more program and share this interesting news with you.
The interest of the news, in addition to the fact that the bacteria could be useful to mitigate climate change, lies in the very nature of the discovered organism. This is, we could say, the first species of carnivorous plant-bacteria discovered. That makes it an extraordinary species.
As we know, carnivorous plants are capable of growing in soils that are not very fertile, or that are too acidic, which do not allow the growth of other plants. This allows them to live with less pressure on the soil from competing plants, but forces them to get the nutrients they cannot extract from the soil by capturing, usually insects, and digesting them. Carnivorous plants do not stop being plants and carry out photosynthesis as the main means of generating their food.
No terrestrial-like marine carnivorous plants have been discovered, to my knowledge. However, in the marine environment there are unicellular organisms that are carnivorous, even herbivorous. I am referring to certain microorganisms that are part of the marine phytoplankton, but that we could also consider part of the zooplankton. These microorganisms, in addition to carrying out photosynthesis, can also ingest others, or capture organic waste, to supply the nutrients that they cannot obtain exclusively through photosynthesis. If pure photosynthetic organisms are called autotrophs and those that capture all the nutrients they need, heterotrophs, organisms that combine both methods to obtain the food they require are called mixotrophs, a word that I did not know until now and that I have just learned .
The newly identified marine microorganism has been named Prorocentrum cf. balticum, despite the fact that it has not been discovered in the Baltic Sea, but on the east coast of Australia, in the Pacific Ocean. The microorganism is a mixotroph, so it is capable of converting other microbes into its snack, although, since we are in the sea, it may be more appropriate to call its food a snack, rather than a snack. Bad jokes aside, this ability allows this microorganism to occupy niches in the oceanic environment that are poor in dissolved nutrients in the water and therefore unsuitable for most other microorganisms that make up phytoplankton.
What has been most interesting to me about this discovery is the procedure with which Prorocentrum cf balticum manages to capture its prey. The microorganism is capable of generating and secreting what scientists call a carbon-rich exopolymer that attracts and traps surrounding microorganisms. The entrapped microorganisms are ingested, and the exopolymer is then discarded.
What the hell is an exopolymer? If my knowledge of etymology does not fail me, the word exopolymer is formed by the combination of three Greek words: exo, which means exterior, poly, which means many, and mero, which means part, or segment. So an exopolymer is a substance made up of many parts that is located on the outside. In this case, the exterior is the surface of Prorocentrum.
The chemical nature of the exopolymer provides it with adhesive properties and, for this reason, it is capable of trapping microorganisms that pass by. We could say that the exopolymer is a kind of mucus that, as in the case of the mucus in our mucosal tissues, our nostrils, our lungs, or our intestines, is also adhesive to many microorganisms and captures them, facilitating in our case not that we eat them, but that we secrete them outside our body.
The mucus-like nature of the exopolymer leads scientists to say that Prorocentrum is surrounded by a mucosphere, that is, a mucus sphere. The mucosphere would also be a dynamic structure, in a continuous process of formation and secretion to the outside, as also happens with the mucus that we produce without ceasing, even when we are not sick.
It is this continuous secretion of mucus from the mucosphere that makes this microorganism interesting in the fight against climate change. According to scientists’ calculations, Prorocentrum, which is not only found in the Pacific Ocean but appears to be a microorganism spread throughout all of Earth’s oceans, could sequester between twenty and one hundred and fifty million tons of carbon annually. According to a recent report, around ten billion tons of carbon would need to be removed from the atmosphere each year to stop climate change.
Together with emission reduction measures, Prorocentrum could significantly help achieve that goal. To do this, it would be necessary to stimulate its growth in nutrient-poor areas of the ocean in order to increase the amount of carbon that Prorocentrum could capture. However, before we start to manipulate the growth of a microorganism on a planetary scale, it is necessary to carry out extensive research work that helps to determine, among other things, the rate of resistance of the exopolymer to digestion by other bacteria, which will decrease its carbon sequestration efficiency; and the rate of sinking into the ocean, where the carbon would be trapped for thousands of years before being able to re-enter the atmosphere. These data are necessary to accurately determine the contribution of the exopolymer to carbon sequestration.
I don’t know what humanity will dare or not do in the future with the planet to save it. Surely, their interventions will depend on the estimated risk of doing nothing versus taking certain measures. Knowing the risk and effectiveness of possible intervention measures on a planetary scale is undoubtedly knowledge that is worth obtaining in case things really get so ugly that it becomes necessary to use it.
Jorge Laborda, March 13, 2022
Reference:
Larsson, M.E., Bramucci, A.R., Collins, S. et al. Mucospheres produced by a mixotrophic protist impact ocean carbon cycling. Nat Commun 13, 1301 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-28867-8
Works by Jorge Laborda.
Your defenses against coronavirus
Your defenses against coronavirus
Deflamed immunology: An introduction to the immune system and its pathologies
Deflamed immunology: An introduction to the immune system and its pathologies
Deflamed immunology: An introduction to the immune system and its pathologies
Kilo of Science Volume XII eBook
Kilo of Science Volume XII Paper
Kilo of Science Volume I. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume II. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume III. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume IV. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume V. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume VI. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume VII. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume VIII. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume IX. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume X. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume XI. Jorge Laborda
Matrix of homeopathy
Chained circumstances. Ed.Lulu
Chained circumstances. Amazon
One moon, one civilization. Why the Moon tells us that we are alone in the Universe
One moon, one civilization. Why the Moon tells us that we are alone in the Universe
One Moon one civilization why the Moon tells us we are alone in the universe
The thousand and one bases of ADN and other science stories
Adenius Fidelius
The intelligence funnel and other essays
The gods have been cloned
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