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Algae to fight global warming

Turn algae into C4 plants, then use the added mass groth to absorb carbon dioxide
 
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Algae might be C3 plants[link], which means they might be less efficient at photosynthesizing than C4 plants which keep oxygen from diminishing the metabolic process.

Engineering algae to be C4 plants should make them grow faster and with greater bulk, sequestering carbon.

Another improvement to growth is removing the histones from algae. Or rather in algae, "histone-like chloroplast proteins". Histones are like DNA spools, the more spools, the more gradual the rate of DNA replication. They found during the mid 20th century that removing them from yeast causes the yeast to grow 3 to 5 times as rapidly.

One possible caveat is that other things eat the algae, then other thing eat the things that eat the algae...

beanangel, Nov 20 2018

Algae might be C3 plants https://biology.sta...ed-by-phytoplankton
[beanangel, Nov 20 2018]

Photosynthesis including map https://en.wikipedi...wiki/Photosynthesis
[bs0u0155, Nov 20 2018]

C3&C4 in algae https://www.ncbi.nl...rticles/PMC3353924/
[bs0u0155, Nov 20 2018]

[link]






       [beany], do you know how many quadrillions of algal cells there are in the oceans? And do you know how long they have been there? And have you ever encountered "evolution"? If C4 metabolism and/or lack of histones gave algae a competitive advantage, then that's would algae would already have.   

       It is very, very difficult to engineer any organism such that it can out-compete its neighbours in a wild environment.
MaxwellBuchanan, Nov 20 2018
  

       Algae aren't plants. They're algae. Algae were here long before us, or plants. They'll be here at the end. When the last cockroach dies, green slime will be doing business as usual. Algae most certainly do not need help. As Max states, we're not qualified and they beat us to it <link>.   

       The main flaw here though is that you assume photosynthetic flux, efficiency, and DNA replication are the limiting factors. Have a look at the oceans in the false-color global image <link>. There is a stripe of modest photosynthetic activity across the equator, but just off and for most of the oceans it's pretty dead, even with all the sun. It's higher off the northern coast of RUSSIA than say, Hawaii. Photosynthesis isn't limiting. There's a big hint in the Amazon delta. Minerals. Close to land where coastal erosion and rivers provide minerals, lots of algae. Even better, glaciers which crush up and flush out rock. Nitrates, phosphates, iron, calcium magnesium. Stuff like that. Also, most often I think, CO2, or bicarbonate, when dissolved.   

       Before Algae got going, we used to have a roughly equal nitrogen-CO2 mix, they changed it 50% to 0.04%. Then they had to go and die and get stuck underground, taking the carbon and leaving behind a thinner toxic oxygen environment. Trees pulled the same trick leaving coal, animals with limestone. The last couple of billion years shows life is pretty good at taking the atmosphere and making it into rock. The last hope was nitrogen, but there are bacteria that have solved that problem.
bs0u0155, Nov 20 2018
  

      




  

       [the above space is left intentionally blank, for [8th] to insert a comedic reference to C4]
MaxwellBuchanan, Nov 20 2018
  

       //a comedic reference to C4//   

       This constitutes the obligatory "Algal Boom!" Joke.
bs0u0155, Nov 20 2018
  

       Just get out, and take that idiot Elwood with you.
8th of 7, Nov 21 2018
  

       //[beany], do you know how many quadrillions of algal cells there are in the oceans?//   

       Perhaps he's met them all?
RayfordSteele, Nov 21 2018
  

       A quick calculation suggests that [beany] (and, indeed me) are both related to algae - we're cousins about 7 trillion times removed.   

       An ancillary fact is that we all contain DNA which has won the lottery of life about 18 trillion times in a row, since biology began.
MaxwellBuchanan, Nov 21 2018
  

       How many millennia far back did Ted Cruz's ancestors splinter off from the rest of us?
RayfordSteele, Nov 22 2018
  
      
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