Tuesday, August 19, 2014

New marine discovery paves the way for more environmentally friendly energy – forskning.se

– It has long been known that bacteria in the oceans act as decomposers, like fungi and other microorganisms in the soil, says Jarone Pinhassi, associate professor of marine microbiology at Linnaeus University. But, thanks to the light-sensitive pigment proteorodopsin also effectively capture carbon dioxide is a novelty.

The oceans play a critical role in the global carbon cycle. In the first place by tying much of the carbon we humans produce by burning fossil fuels. But also through the photosynthesis of microscopic algae, phytoplankton, performing in the sunlit surface waters of the seas. This photosynthesis calculated daily bind around 72 million tonnes of coal. Now, researchers at Linnaeus University that even bacteria with proteorodopsin can fix large amounts of carbon dioxide: up to 30% of the cellular material in the bacteria that grow in the light comes from carbon dioxide.

– We previously thought that bacterial utilization of sunlight acts as a nutritional supplement, a supplement, says Jarone Pinhassi. But our genetic analysis of bacteria in the oceans shows that sunlight directly controls the central parts of the metabolism of the bacteria works.

There are roughly about 1 billion bacteria per liter of sea water, which is constantly active. Since proteorodopsin was discovered in 2000, studies have shown that half of the bacteria in the ocean is the pigment. Jarone Pinhassi and his research team have previously found that bacteria with proteorodopsin can grow better in the light than in the dark and that bacteria with pigment also survive starvation periods in better light. The new results show that these properties are directly related to the mechanisms that regulated genetically.

– An attractive idea is to exploit the marine bacteria’s ability to conserve sunlight and carbon dioxide for biotechnological applications, says Jarone Pinhassi. To ultimately utilize the knowledge of bacterial carbon fixation and metabolism in the context of the development of clean and renewable energy would be fascinating.

Read external link, opens in new window full article published this week on the website of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA

Jarone Pinhassi is the leader of one of Linnaeus University spetforskningsgrupper: Univercity Linnaeus Centre for Ecology and Evolution in Microbial Model Systems. Read more open in new window if Eemis.

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