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According to researchers of Indian origin in the United States, it may soon be possible to design plants that develop their own fertilizer using atmospheric nitrogen to create chlorophyll for photosynthesis. . who uses photosynthesis to create oxygen during the day and, at night, uses nitrogen to create chlorophyll for photosynthesis
The research, published in the journal mBio, could eliminate the 39 Using Some Artificial Fertilizers, According to Himadri Pakrasi and Maitrayee Bhattacharyya-Pakrasi, of the University of Washington, this discovery could have a revolutionary effect on agriculture and the health of the planet
. This process produces greenhouse gases that are one of the main drivers of climate change.
Fertilization is a system of release of nitrogen that plants use to create chlorophyll for photosynthesis, but less than 40% of nitrogen in commercial fertilizer arrives at the plant .
After fertilizing a plant, there is another problem: runoff. Fertilizers carried by the rain flow into streams, rivers, bays and lakes, feeding algae that can escape control, blocking sunlight and killing plants and animals.
The researchers said:
The Earth's atmosphere contains about 78% nitrogen, and the Pakrasi laboratory has designed a bacterium that can use this atmospheric gas – a process known as "fixation" of nitrogen –
The research was based on the fact that, although there are no plants able to fix the nitrogen of the air, there is a subset of cyanobacteria (bacteria that photosynthesize like plants) capable of doing so.
Cyanobacteria can do this even though oxygen, a byproduct of photosynthesis, interferes with the process of fixing nitrogen.
The bacteria used in this research, Cyanothece, are able to fix nitrogen. "Cyanobacteria are the only bacteria that have a circadian rhythm," explains Pakrasi.
Cyanothece photosynthesizes during the day, converting sunlight into chemical energy used as fuel, and fixes nitrogen at night, after The scientists said the research team wanted to take Cyanothece's genes, responsible for this day-night mechanism, and put them in another type of cyanobacteria, Synechocystis, to coax this plant.
To find the right gene sequence, the team searched for the revealing circadian rhythm.
"We saw a contiguous set of 35 genes that were only doing things at night and" The next steps for the team are to dig deeper into the details of the process, perhaps refining even further the subset of genes needed to fix nitrogen, "said Pakrasi. n, and collaborate with other plant scientists to apply the lessons learned from this study to the following level: Nitrogen-Fixing Plants
Cultures that can use the Nitrogen of the plant. air will be the most effective for subsistence farmers – about 800 million According to the World Bank, yields increase on a scale advantageous for a family or city and free up time that was once spent on manual fertilization, d & # 39; after the researchers.
(This story was not edited by Devdiscourse staff and is generated automatically from a syndicated feed.)
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