[dupe] Some more discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40011438
Thanks. :)
Scientists discover first nitrogen fixing organelle
31–40 of 62 posts
Re: Scientists discover first nitrogen fixing organelle
#32Using this to reduce the need for fertilizer would be awesome, but the engineer in me has to ask “What could possibly go wrong”. Interstellar showed one scenario. A nitrogen absorbing crop-blight or species out-evolving out food crops and overtaking them. With far more fuel the odds would be in favor of species that can consume nitrogen, and how do you keep those at bay when it happens?
If you’re an engineer, surely you recognize that the major plot whole in the movie is that doing an interstellar travel is way more difficult than whatever blight they had to fight.
Re: Scientists discover first nitrogen fixing organelle
#33Using this to reduce the need for fertilizer would be awesome, but the engineer in me has to ask “What could possibly go wrong”. Interstellar showed one scenario. A nitrogen absorbing crop-blight or species out-evolving out food crops and overtaking them. With far more fuel the odds would be in favor of species that can consume nitrogen, and how do you keep those at bay when it happens?
If you’re an engineer, surely you recognize that the major plot whole in the movie is that doing an interstellar travel is way more difficult than whatever blight they had to fight.
Not the only plot hole, but yeah, agreed.
Re: Scientists discover first nitrogen fixing organelle
#34Using this to reduce the need for fertilizer would be awesome, but the engineer in me has to ask “What could possibly go wrong”. Interstellar showed one scenario. A nitrogen absorbing crop-blight or species out-evolving out food crops and overtaking them. With far more fuel the odds would be in favor of species that can consume nitrogen, and how do you keep those at bay when it happens?
> With far more fuel the odds would be in favor of species that can consume nitrogen, and how do you keep those at bay when it happens?
Harvest them like we did with guano deposits. Won't take long for a second Guano Island Act [1].
Re: Scientists discover first nitrogen fixing organelle
#35Reminds me of this ancient plant that produces its own fertilizer from Nitrogen with bacteria https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/08/amaizeba...
Re: Scientists discover first nitrogen fixing organelle
#36Using this to reduce the need for fertilizer would be awesome, but the engineer in me has to ask “What could possibly go wrong”. Interstellar showed one scenario. A nitrogen absorbing crop-blight or species out-evolving out food crops and overtaking them. With far more fuel the odds would be in favor of species that can consume nitrogen, and how do you keep those at bay when it happens?
All plants are "nitrogen absorbing", even those that can fix nitrogen. After all, nitrogen fixation is terribly expensive in energy, so plants avoid doing it if they can.
Re: Scientists discover first nitrogen fixing organelle
#37No doubt we'll see this transplanted into GM crops for reduced fertilizer need.
Or worse, multiple faster than algaes and sucking up all the Nitrogen from thr air.
A photosynthetic organism that fixed more nitrogen than it needed would (1) be at a terrible competitive disadvantage (nitrogen fixation requires a great deal of energy), and (2) would be a source of fixed nitrogen when it died, boosting the growth of other plants that could leech off its efforts.
Re: Scientists discover first nitrogen fixing organelle
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." Albert Allen Bartlett If there is even a 0.001% chance of an organism with this artificially tacked on to it getting in to the wild, the experiment is not worth anything to be potentially learned from it. It could cause our starvation well before we could respond effectively.
If the exponent is so small that it's not reached 1 in 100,000,000 years we're safe until humanity goes extinct.
You're an optimist.
Re: Scientists discover first nitrogen fixing organelle
#39Using this to reduce the need for fertilizer would be awesome, but the engineer in me has to ask “What could possibly go wrong”. Interstellar showed one scenario. A nitrogen absorbing crop-blight or species out-evolving out food crops and overtaking them. With far more fuel the odds would be in favor of species that can consume nitrogen, and how do you keep those at bay when it happens?
It is curious that, apparently, almost all agricultural technology is focused on to break the ecosystem between the crops.
That tech discards the nitrogen that would be produced by microorganisms and animals like worms, included seasonally shed leaves plants with deep roots, while promote "solutions" towards the soil desertification and the dependence on multinational corporations that destroy such sings of life around the crop (what also introduce Cancer in our lives), to sell their annual interdependence solutions, as Bayer-Monsanto does.
IMHO, the bioengineering tech for crops should be more focused in the ecosystem equilibrium, predators for the plages only over the specified plants, which should include micro-robotics also ( Before harvesting, command to make predators leave the plants ).
It seems more than 60% of the oxygen in the atmosphere is produced by algae, if new algae are introduced into the ecosystem and modified to massively consume nitrogen from the atmosphere for crops, one can take for sure that a planetary scale problem will arise.
Re: Scientists discover first nitrogen fixing organelle
#40Using this to reduce the need for fertilizer would be awesome, but the engineer in me has to ask “What could possibly go wrong”. Interstellar showed one scenario. A nitrogen absorbing crop-blight or species out-evolving out food crops and overtaking them. With far more fuel the odds would be in favor of species that can consume nitrogen, and how do you keep those at bay when it happens?
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262544283/nordenholts-million/ > In this novel originally published in 1923, as denitrifying bacteria inimical to plant growth spreads around the world, toppling civilizations and threatening to wipe out humankind, the British plutocrat Nordenholt sets himself up as the benignant dictator of a ruthlessly efficient, entirely undemocratic, survivalist colony established in Scotland's Clyde…
Thanks for this. Published 1923, so it's public domain too.