Scientists have caught a once-in-a-billion-years evolutionary event in progress, as two lifeforms have merged into one organism that boasts abilities its peers would envy. Last time this happened (1.6 billion years ago), certain advanced cells absorbed a type of bacteria that could harvest energy from sunlight. These became organelles called chloroplasts, which gave sunlight-harvesting abilities, as well as a fetching green color, to a group of lifeforms you might have heard of – plants.

And now, scientists have discovered that it’s happening again. A species of algae called Braarudosphaera bigelowii was found to have engulfed a cyanobacterium that lets them do something that algae, and plants in general, can’t normally do – "fixing" nitrogen straight from the air, and combining it with other elements to create more useful compounds.

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[–] victorz 21 points 6 months ago (17 children)

And what a feature drop it was. Right? Or was it? Not sure what "fixing" nitrogen is helpful for...

[–] fireweed 73 points 6 months ago (11 children)

As any farmer or gardener will tell you, nitrogen is critical for plant growth, and for most plants it's obtained via the soil. Soil nitrogen can be depleted if not replenished (in an agricultural context, by compost or fertilizer), but there's plentiful nitrogen in the atmosphere (which is mostly nitrogen, actually) so any plant that has nitrogen fixing abilities has constant access to this critical nutrient. There currently exist nitrogen-fixing plants (peas and clover for example), but they don't actually do it on their own, they rely on a symbiotic relationship with bacteria.

[–] victorz 1 points 6 months ago (6 children)

This is interesting, thank you. So... I'm guessing we don't really want wild plants to gain this ability? We really want to control this ability? What would happen if all plants gained this ability -- would we have any nitrogen left in the atmosphere? I'm guessing we personally (as a species) need the current mixture of air compounds to be a certain way (the way it is now, pretty much) in order not to be poisoned? I've heard about oxygen poisoning -- that's a thing, right?

Or we might want to have some plants gain this ability in order to do terraforming of another planet which has mainly nitrogen in its atmosphere, very far into the future? Would be cool. Maybe.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

Oh wow, didn't even think about that. It'd be like the great oxygen event which almost killed all life in earth https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event

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