#101: Children of the Wasteland: Experimental Biology vs. Global Catastrophe ch.4

Chapter Four: The Depth-Seekers. After life on Earth almost ended in a mass extinction ~250 million years ago, single-celled photosynthetic plankton evolved that mineralize carbon to make exterior shells. When they die, they drop to the bottom of the ocean, and this carbon becomes geologically stable. This ushered in an age of greater climate stability. One of the most important of these marine organisms is the coccolithophores, whose beautiful calcium carbonate shells form seafloor sediments that are sometimes kilometers thick. Coccolithophores appear to have already done a great deal of heavy lifting to mitigate current climate change, with their populations fluxing upward, forming new sediments.

Could we enter into a coevolutionary process with them to take even more carbon out of the atmosphere? We examine a virus that constrains their population abundance, and a conceivable path to conferring resistance to it: by experimenting with new bacterial symbionts. Numerous bacteria already have mutualistic associations with coccolithophores, and experimental work in commercial algae cultivation has already shown promising results in increasing biomass. Like the biobot experiments we examined last time, such a research paradigm would allow us to explore a vastly wider range of possibilities, far more quickly, than trying to achieve organism-scale outcomes one gene splice at a time.

Bibliography for episode 101:

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