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According to a team of researchers of Indian origin in the United States, it may soon be possible to design plants capable of developing their own fertilizer using atmospheric nitrogen to create chlorophyll for photosynthesis
Louis has developed a bacterium that uses photosynthesis to create oxygen during the day and, at night, uses nitrogen to create chlorophyll for photosynthesis
According to scientists Himadri Pakrasi and Maitrayee Bhattacharyya, this discovery could have a revolutionary effect on agriculture and the health of the planet.
Genetic manipulation
The Pakrasi laboratory based its research on the fact that, although there are no plants able to fix the nitrogen of the plant, air, there is a subset of cyanobacteria capable
The bacterium used in this research, Cyanothece is able to fix nitrogen because it has a circadian rhythm
Cyanothece photosynthesis during the day, converting sunlight to the chemical energy that they use as fuel, and fix nitrogen at night, after removing most of oxygen created during photosynthesis by breathing, the researchers said.
The research team took the genes of Cyanothece for this day-night mechanism, and put them in another type of cyanobacteria, Synechocystis for the to coax in fixing nitrogen from the air too.
The next steps for the team are to dig deeper into the details of the process, perhaps further refining the subset of genes needed to fix nitrogen.
The team will then collaborate with other scientists to apply the lessons learned from this study to the following level: ants.
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