"The discovery of the PyShell could also open promising avenues for biotechnological research aimed at combatting climate change ..." I wonder. Given that the oceans are already full of these diatoms, and the numbers must be gigantic, would humans be able to do anything in the same order of magnitude?
> "...would humans be able to do anything in the same order of magnitude?"
Good question. Answering questions is called 'research'. ;-)
I'm skeptical for the same reasons as you, too. Let's see... the ocean covers 361km^2. If we could engineer a material with "cells" that were 1000x as effective at carbon capture as diatoms, and the manufactured material was 1000x more densely packed together than diatoms are on the ocean surface, then you'd need 361 square kilometers of the magic material. Which is not out of the realm of possibility, though I have no idea what the density of diatoms is and I have a sneaking suspicion that we'd be looking at more of the 3x-4x range of efficiency improvement. And of course, you need to turn the CO2 into something and deposit it somewhere, and maybe move it around lot. Which would use energy that would produce more CO2, offsetting the gains. Oh, and manufacture the stuff.
I'm thinking releasing less of the stuff and stopping forest destruction might be much more effective for a long time here...
“We have now discovered that diatom pyrenoids are encased in a lattice-like protein shell,” says Dr. Manon Demulder, author on both studies. “The PyShell not only gives the pyrenoid its shape, but it helps create a high CO2 concentration in this compartment. This enables Rubisco to efficiently fix CO2 from the ocean and convert it into nutrients.”
"The discovery of the PyShell could also open promising avenues for biotechnological research aimed at combatting climate change ..." I wonder. Given that the oceans are already full of these diatoms, and the numbers must be gigantic, would humans be able to do anything in the same order of magnitude?
> "...would humans be able to do anything in the same order of magnitude?"
Good question. Answering questions is called 'research'. ;-)
I'm skeptical for the same reasons as you, too. Let's see... the ocean covers 361km^2. If we could engineer a material with "cells" that were 1000x as effective at carbon capture as diatoms, and the manufactured material was 1000x more densely packed together than diatoms are on the ocean surface, then you'd need 361 square kilometers of the magic material. Which is not out of the realm of possibility, though I have no idea what the density of diatoms is and I have a sneaking suspicion that we'd be looking at more of the 3x-4x range of efficiency improvement. And of course, you need to turn the CO2 into something and deposit it somewhere, and maybe move it around lot. Which would use energy that would produce more CO2, offsetting the gains. Oh, and manufacture the stuff.
I'm thinking releasing less of the stuff and stopping forest destruction might be much more effective for a long time here...
Engineer a more efficient diatom. Release it into the wild. What could go wrong.
I guess there would be a silicate famine in the seas, that seems to be the limiting factor for diatom presence overall among plankton
[] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatom#/media/File:Diatoms_Egg...
“We have now discovered that diatom pyrenoids are encased in a lattice-like protein shell,” says Dr. Manon Demulder, author on both studies. “The PyShell not only gives the pyrenoid its shape, but it helps create a high CO2 concentration in this compartment. This enables Rubisco to efficiently fix CO2 from the ocean and convert it into nutrients.”