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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[–] fireweed 73 points 2 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 2 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.

[–] Hugin 6 points 2 months ago (4 children)

The N2 in the atmosphere go through a lot of conversions in the bacteria and plant but eventually ends up as nitrates which then break down and release N2 back in the atmosphere.

So no we won't end up with no nitrogen in the atmosphere. Generally we want more nitrogen fixed as most crops deplete the nitrogen and only crops that host the nitrogen fixing bacteria can replenish the fixed nitrogen in the soil.

This is the main reason for crop rotations. Farmers grow corn that depletes the fixed nitrogen and then soy that has bacteria that replenishes it.

It would be great if corn got that feature as a lot of fossil fuels are used to fix nitrogen for fertilizers. See the Haber process for more info. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process

[–] ericjmorey 5 points 2 months ago

It would be great if corn got that feature

There's a variety of maize that does fix nitrogen:

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/08/amaizeballs/567140/

There are some political and technical hurdles to adapting it more broadly to the agricultural industry.

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