And I would build planes based on anti-gravity rather than aerodynamics. The problem as with your suggestion, is that it is technically not that easy.
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I have no idea how hard it would be to engineer nitrogen-fixing corn, but there are reasons why cover crops are barely used in large scale agriculture. Some of which are that if you are growing the cover crop you are not growing the cash crop, and the cover crop requires termination. For example by plowing as you suggest, but that destroys soil health–and building soil health is a primary reason for using a cover crop in the first place.
From an industrial farming perspective, it is much easier and cheaper to simply input chemical fertilizers than monkey around with cover crops. But this approach to farming has all kinds of knock-on effectives like aquatic dead zones, soil erosion, and declining nutrient value in the food we eat. Engineering nitrogen-fixing corn might be hard, but it is something we need to consider given the alternatives.
FWIW, I use cover crops and other methods to build soil health in my own yard and garden. But it takes extra work. It is a lot easier just to spray some Miracle Grow.
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Sure, I’m all for exploring the possibility. I’m just saying that based on my limited experience, creating a GMO crop like corn capable of N-fixation independent of microbes is currently about as doable as creating a flying horse. That doesn’t mean I oppose Pegasus, but I don’t think it is a plausible option at the moment.
N-fixation is a complex biochemical process. The algae in question appears to have incorporated an ancestral bacterium capable of N-fixation. The bacterium is either a new organelle or in a symbiotic relationship with the algae, depending on how one wants to look at it. The strategy then is to modify a plant so that it can take up and propagate this organelle/bacterium. This is similar in principle to modifying plants to associate with N-fixing bacteria in the same way that legumes do as in one article I linked.
“Having a nitrogen-fixing organelle in a crop plant would be, of course, fantastic.” But introducing this ability into plants will be no easy feat, she warns. Plant cells containing the genetic code for the nitroplast would need to be engineered in such a way that the genes were transferred stably from generation to generation, for example. “That would be the most difficult thing to do,” she says. Scientists discover first algae that can fix nitrogen — thanks to a tiny cell structure
Difficult is to put it mildly.
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Can CRISPR edit multiple genes at once?
Here, we show that a collection of genes can be disrupted in a single animal via multiple rounds of CRISPR/Cas9 mediated genome editing. We found that up to three genes can be simultaneously disrupted in a single editing event with high efficiency.Nov 14, 2023
My comment it is far too inexpensive not to do exactly that with concurrent sampling.
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People have been looking for ways to get corn to make its own nitrogen for at least decades. New gene editing techniques opens up many more possible avenues. Better understanding of how genes work should help.
No doubt people are working on it. Will not be easy. But we have already seen genetic miracles. Its not impossible.
This is happening right now. As climate change drives the planet warmer and warmer, plants have to spend more energy just to grow. Never mind producing offspring (which we eat for food). With less energy available to put into reproduction, which I posted here some time ago, the food value of crops decreases as the planet gets warmer.
Do a search for “nutrition value of crops as a result of climate change”. I got a lot of hits, including from Harvard and a number of other sources.
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Technology is a wonderful thing, but just to give an idea of the scope of the difficulty here is a brief description of the N-fixation pathway in bacteria. 5.15E: Genetics and Regulation of N₂ Fixation - Biology LibreTexts.
There are 17 N-fixation genes, not including all the gene expression regulators. And note that these are bacterial genes, so the regulation is very different from that found in plants. Very different. You aren’t going to put bacterial genes into plants and get them to work. Not without getting a Nobel prize.
As a molecular biologist, the only strategy that I can see that might work would be to identify the genes in legumes that allow those plants to interact with N-fixation bacteria and see if one can get them into other crops. But as I mentioned before, that is not a new idea and is being investigated. It’s possible that this algae discovery might facilitate things, but I am skeptical. Legumes are plants after all so moving legume genes into corn is no big deal. Algae is a protist, and so presents additional challenges.
I suspect that labs will take this Algal N-fixation organelle and inject it into plant cells. If they can get it to propagate in these cells they might be able to get this organelle to be inherited in the same way as chloroplasts and mitochondria. This need not involve genetic modification but would probably require a lot of luck and probably an act of a deity or two.
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It has been happening for decades. USDA measures the nutritional value of crops. I think it was one of the Pollen books (can’t remember) but I saw a chart and the nutritional value of food in the US has been declining for a long, long time.
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AI will play a huge role in bio-genetic engineering. It may be the single most powerful of AI.
d fb
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This assumes that the algal N-fixation organelle has its own DNA and can replicate itself like mitochondria and chloroplasts. These organelles have just been discovered. Characterizing them will be quite a project in itself, let alone putting them to practical use.
Incidentally, are you aware that a type of sea slug steals chloroplasts from algae?
Wendy
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True and I will never collect a Nobel.
But this is easier than it seems. The genes that work on the roots of the plant are key. That may eliminate most of the 17 N-fixation gene combinations in the search to get nitrogen uptake by plants. Most of the 17 N-fixation genes are in the plant and will work with whatever the roots can supply.
If the focus is the roots, then the soil becomes the home of the bacteria. The bacteria is fed by the soil. The bacteria may need genetic modifications.
BTW if the roots are key that presents a major problem.
Either the soil has nitrogen added or the N-fixation has to happen elsewhere in the plant ie the leaves of the plant.
adding if the leaves were to N-fixation with their own genes from the surrounding natural air, the bacteria might not be necessary. Genetic modification might skip using the bacteria. While learning from the bacteria.
Would it be easier to keep the root system and work on ‘grafting’ different plants onto the roots?
DB2
That is not on topic.
This is probably true. It will be especially true if the AI (after being trained using lots of stuff humans have said and done over the years) decides that the best thing for the planet would be fewer humans and bioengineers things that will reduce the overall number of humans. Bonus points if it can target exactly which humans to reduce and also improve the average quality of humans as it reduces the numbers.
Here’s a corn bacterium symbiosis that fixes N.
ralph
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I completely doubt it.
When we finally have sentient life in machines long after all of us here are dead, the first forms of sentient life will be mildly retarded at best.
If plant genes are required how about an e coli that fixes nitrogen.
Petroleum free fertilizer solutions.
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That is the best idea yet. Fix the soil not the plant. The plant can take care of itself from the soil.
It is not E. coli in this case. Different thread.
There is visual evidence that that N-fixation organelle divides and segregates during the cell cycle, much like mitochondria.
Coale et al . used soft x-ray tomography to visualize cell morphology and division of the alga, revealing a coordinated cell cycle in which the endosymbiont divides and is split evenly, similar to the situation for plastids and mitochondria in these cells. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk1075
A review of what is known about the “nitroplast” is here: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ado8571
There are already free living bacteria that fix nitrogen. Their potential to improve soil is being studied, but it probably isn’t much relative to the scale of modern agriculture. Diversity and Activity of Free-Living Nitrogen-Fixing Bacteria and Total Bacteria in Organic and Conventionally Managed Soils - PMC
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