Improving Solar Energy Capture in Plants
by Jeremy Elton Jacquot, Los Angeles on 05.20.07
Amid all the recent hubbub surrounding advances made in ethanol-based renewable energy, it is sometimes easy to discount the staying power of photovoltaics as a source of sustainable energy. Despite the merits of biofuel technology, the reality is that current photovoltaic panels are capable of capturing substantially more energy per square meter than are biomass crops such as corn and sugarcane, which rely on photosynthesis to capture and store solar energy, that are being pushed for use as feedstock for ethanol.
That is not to say that we should then dismiss the use of biofuel as a viable source of renewable energy. As Alfred Spormann, a professor of microbiology at Stanford University, elaborates in the video, genetic engineering could be used to improve the energy conversion process in plants, thus improving storage capacity and making biomass feedstocks a more cost-efficient solution to our energy woes.
Spormann's research centers around finding innovative ways to engineer cyanobacteria, specifically Synechocystis and Anabena, to produce molecular hydrogen. Because it combusts to water without the side formation of greenhouse gases and other pollutants, hydrogen provides a promising platform to develop a long-term sustainable and environmentally friendly renewable technology. Current efforts are focused on understanding the biochemical and genetic mechanisms of oxygenic photosynthesis in the cyanobacteria.
::Biofuel feedstock: How efficiently can plants capture solar energy?, ::The Spormann Laboratory: Research
See also: ::The Dangers of Biofuel, ::Biofuel That Grows Like A Magic Mushroom, ::Light + Water = Renewable Energy
Yaye, we shouldn't dismiss ethanol because we can go and genetically engineer the living fungi out of everything.
Very heartening!
But this is the future Lenny!
Hey it's our planet, the other species can't answer back, let's re-engineer everything for our benefit!! It's what we are good at!
I agree with Lenny,
Wait, I have an idea. Instead of using less energy, mass transit, biking, designing for cradle to cradle, protecting what we have: lets just genitically modify everything to fit our needs. This worked really well for Monsanto and their successfull corn plants that helped all the starving people in third world countries and also cut back back on the use of pesticides. Ha Ha.
Watch "The Future of Food" and then tell me you think we should be creating GM anything.
Since the introduction of GM corn, we have wiped out corn diversity in Mexico. Think about this: what if our GM foods can't survive in the long run? We have wiped out all the diversity and have nothing left to build from. That is the future and it scares the hell out of me. I would much rather stand by a food source that has been tried and tested through millions of years of evolution, then chose one developed over the course of 20 years. I don't care how advanced we are. Nature has an advantage over anything GM, nature has a long record of trial and error testing. We have very little.
The title of this TH piece is disappointing. While the text identifies these organisms as cyanobacteria, ther title speaks of plants. I would expect treehuggers to understand 5th grade biology. these are NOT plants.
why can't they work at what they can derive from what nature has shown us to be strong rather than fudging with it's innards?
cyanobacteria - prokaryotic organisms without organized chloroplasts but having chlorophyll a and oxygen-evolving photosynthesis; capable of fixing nitrogen in heterocysts; occurring in lichens both as primary photobionts and as internal or external cephalodia; still commonly called blue-green algae.
www.anbg.gov.au/glossary/webpubl/lichglos.htm
Although algae have conventionally been regarded as simple plants, they actually span more than one domain, including both Eukaryota and Bacteria (see Blue-green algae), as well as more than one kingdom, including plants and protists, the latter being traditionally considered more animal-like (see Protozoa). Thus algae do not represent a single evolutionary direction or line but a level of organization that may have developed several times in the early history of life on Earth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae
The other great contribution of the cyanobacteria is the origin of plants. The chloroplast with which plants make food for themselves is actually a cyanobacterium living within the plant's cells. Sometime in the late Proterozoic, or in the early Cambrian, cyanobacteria began to take up residence within certain eukaryote cells, making food for the eukaryote host in return for a home. This event is known as endosymbiosis, and is also the origin of the eukaryotic mitochondrion.
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/bacteria/cyanointro.html
Cyanobacteria may not be a "plant" per say but it most certainly is a MAJOR player of endosymbiosis in plants.
orious, the title may not be perfect, but it is not completely inaccurate because modified cyanobacteria could eventually alter the way plants make food for themselves.
Algea in my mind is MORE important then most plants for maintaining a ecological balance, because they are responsible for a large portion of CO2 conversion processes in nature.
i'm so behind, i didnt know that corn plants is suitable as an energy alternative.
i'm so behind, i didnt know that corn plants is suitable as an energy alternative.