Red algae proteins grafted into tobacco double plant growth

https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2023/07/red-algae-proteins-grafted-tobacco-double-plant-growth

by geox • 3 years ago

114 75 3 years ago

news.cornell.edu

Qem• 3 years ago

So after Tomacco we now have Algacco?

dc3k• 3 years ago

Tomalgae

h2odragon2• 3 years ago

If we're tuning algae to make fun molecules why stop at (or start with) nicotine? How about meth? THC?

I know which I'd rather see escape into the wild again. Methed up sharks all over the shorelines or stoned ones? The choice is easy.

Of course if we can get them to make a stable LSD then the sharks and the squids will be coming ashore to do song and dance routines for us.

fsckboy• 3 years ago

unless i'm reading your implication wrong, sounds like you prefer sharks with the munchies to sharks with bad teeth?

knicholes• 3 years ago

I wonder if drugs that affect humans affect sharks in the same way!?

konfusinomicon• 3 years ago

ugh as if the biting isnt enough, now the sharks are gonna tell you their whole life story in magnificent detail before they take you legs off...

Tade02• 3 years ago

I can't help but notice the omission of cocaine.

raydiatian• 3 years ago

“The taste of the ocean”

Man this one is gonna be hard to advertise

hansoolo• 3 years ago

For all plants available, why tobacco?

Pigalowda• 3 years ago

It’s a model organism in plant bio. Like drosphila/fruit flies or xenopus/frog or E.coli and candida

gerdesj2• 3 years ago

Its a plant, and:

"Tobacco is the easiest land plant in which to manipulate Rubisco and so serves as the test case for developing a more efficient Rubisco that can be transferred to more agronomically relevant species, Gunn said."

Call it Nicotiana instead!

cmrdporcupine• 3 years ago

FWIW it's a beautiful plant. I grow it every year just for the flowers, which have an amazing scent. A humid evening after a rain, the garden at night with the flower scent. Quite lovely.

I've tried curing and smoking the leaves, but without the right facilities it doesn't go too well and doesn't produce anything close to the quality of store bought pipe tobacco.

dmix• 3 years ago

No one reads the article I see.

gweinberg• 3 years ago

They had already used all their poison oak in other experiments.

jmount• 3 years ago

Couldn't get Triffids cuttings.

wolfendin• 3 years ago

Why do they do these experiments in tobacco? Is it just easier?

morkalork2• 3 years ago

Afaik it is standard model organism, much like the humble fruit fly.

TFortunato2• 3 years ago

Tobacco is one of a handful of plant "model organisms", basically meaning that we have a lot of studies already done and genetic / metabolic information about it available.

Scientists like using these when doing basic research of, e.g. gene function, because that wealth of prior information available reduces the amount of "unknown unknowns" to account for.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_organism

cassepipe• 3 years ago

So you are saying tobacco is the vegetal world equivalent of the mice !

Ultimatt• 3 years ago

Tobacco isn't a model organism at all. Solacea genomes only really got sorted in the late 2010s. Its worth pointing out if you could do something in Tobacco you could have done it in Tomato or Potato, you know those crops that dont kill people globally but sustain them. Arabidopsis thaliana (a type of cress) is the small plant model organism, not because it's biologically significant, but because it had a tiny diploid genome that could be mapped early and it's easy to grow quickly in a lab and seeds fast.

shawnz• 3 years ago

From the article

Tobacco is the easiest land plant in which to manipulate Rubisco and so serves as the test case for developing a more efficient Rubisco that can be transferred to more agronomically relevant species, Gunn said.

unchocked• 3 years ago

Engineering an improved rubisco into the food supply (or the notional biological carbon capture stream) would significantly boost to the carrying capacity of our planet.

morkalork2• 3 years ago

Alternatively, we could carry the same number of people while preserving more of the planet for wildlife and wilderness.

deelowe• 3 years ago

Good news. People are having less kids and population growth may reverse soon.

onlypositive2• 3 years ago

Nobody's growing corn in the mountains.

Tanoc• 3 years ago

That's impossible. We'd have to reduce to about half of where we are now just for the fauna to stabilize. We've just taken too much too quickly. In the oceans for example there's population collapse of entire genera in different locations every single year and entire dexoygenated dead areas in the photic zone because of overfishing and damage caused by commercial fleets. According to the IUCN Red List there have been at least ten extinctions every year for the past thirty years. It doesn't help that there's a rivalry going on between which country can post the highest numbers for a mostly meaningless metric in GDP, causing deforestation for livestock, overfishing for export, monocultures spreading dozens of miles for crops that have a fifty percent chance of being burned to preserve prices, and so much mining entire mountain ranges disappear.

BaseballPhysics2• 3 years ago

The trouble is you need a ton of water and fertilizer to support that growth, and drought combined with soil quality degradation is already a huge problem in a lot of regions, and will only become moreso as the globe warms and, p.s., fertilizer production is heavily dependent on petrochemicals and contributes to CO2 emissions.

It could be a huge development, no doubt, but there are many bottlenecks in agricultural production, so we need to be careful not to oversell this as some kind of panacea.

dtgriscom• 3 years ago

Would it take more water and fertilizer per pound of crop? If not, then that's a wash.

Reason0772• 3 years ago

Great news for smokers, if this will one day result in cheaper cigarettes!

lettergram• 3 years ago

The government has been intentionally making tobacco expensive for a generation or more.

They regulated all the supplies to grow tobacco, making it all but impossible to profitably grow in the US. Then they added a bunch of tariffs on both supply and tobacco. Then they tax the hell out of the final product.

Cigarettes are super cheap without government interference

noduerme4• 3 years ago

The tariffs on French and Spanish imports really sucked. The day Gauloises and Gitanes disappeared from the US was dark. I would pay $50 a pouch for that stuff if I could obtain it anywhere. I never come back from Europe without the maximum I'm allowed to bring in.

hanniabu• 3 years ago

If only they did that for sugar

noduerme4• 3 years ago

I wonder if you're getting downvotes because people think you're serious. Everyone who prides themselves on not smoking loves a chance to get a little classist dig at those who do.

Smokes ain't expensive because of the cost of tobacco, though. They're expensive because, like most vices, the demand is highly inelastic and governments can tax the hell out of them without pissing off anyone who matters (once the gentry and the middle class have been conditioned not to smoke - prior to that, they were handed out as rations).

I love smoking, and ideally all those taxes I pay would be going toward cancer research and health care subsidies, but in reality they just go to the budgets of nonprofits and a class of people whose job is to further ostracize anyone who enjoys tobacco.

hgomersall• 3 years ago

Those taxes you pay are entirely about encouraging you and everyone else to smoke less, and it's one of a few interventions that supported by evidence.

hiergiltdiestfu• 3 years ago

Red tobacco? Like in FarCry 6? :D

JoeAltmaier• 3 years ago

Or Tomacco in The Simpsons?

torgian• 3 years ago

Far Cry Six anyone?

andrewstuart• 3 years ago

They should blend it with tomatoes.

accrual• 3 years ago

Mmm, Tomacco.

https://simpsonswiki.com/wiki/Tomacco

lilgreenland• 3 years ago

plant growth is not doubled yet, but this is still really neat.

“We’re not at the point where we’re outperforming wild-type tobacco, but we’re on the right trajectory,” Gunn said. “We only need fairly modest improvements to Rubisco performance, because even a very small increase over a whole growing season can lead to massive changes in plant growth and yield, and the potential applications span many sectors: higher agricultural production; more efficient and affordable biofuel production; carbon sequestration approaches; and artificial energy possibilities.”

Red algae proteins grafted into tobacco double plant growth

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