Strains specialized to live in high-CO2 oceanic environments have evolved traits that are useful for decarbonization and bioproduction.
Strains specialized to live in high-CO2 oceanic environments have evolved traits that are useful for decarbonization and bioproduction.
An international coalition of researchers from the United States and Italy has discovered a novel strain of cyanobacteria, or algae, isolated from volcanic ocean vents that is especially adept at growing rapidly in the presence of CO2 and readily sinks in water, making it a prime candidate for biologically-based carbon sequestration projects and bioproduction of valuable commodities. This strain, nicknamed “Chonkus,” was found off the coast of the island of Vulcano in Sicily, Italy — an environment in which marine CO2 is abundant due to shallow volcanic vents. The discovery is described in a paper published today in Applied and Environmental Microbiology.
“Dissolved carbon is relatively dilute compared to all the other molecules in the ocean, and that limits the growth of photosynthetic organisms that live there. We decided to investigate what happens when you alleviate that limiting factor by going to a place with plenty of carbon, where some organisms could have evolved the ability to use it to galvanize their growth,” said co-corresponding author Max Schubert, Ph.D., who was a staff scientist at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University when the work was conducted and is now Lead Project Scientist at Align to Innovate. “This naturally occurring strain of cyanobacteria has several traits that could be useful to humans, including highly dense growth and a natural tendency to sink in water, making Chonkus a particularly interesting organism for future work on decarbonization and biomanufacturing.”
Read more at Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard
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