CharonY

There are some attempts in that direction, mostly targeted at toxic VOCs. From what I recall, it seems that likely microbes are responsible for oxidizing some of the VOCs and breaking them down . But I don't think that algae were shown to do that. Conversely, I vaguely remember that some algae actually release VOCs (though I cannot recall whether those were in any form harmful). The provided link paints a very poor picture of the capabilities of the company, considering they are conflating CO2 capture with capture of harmful substances (via photosynthesis, no less). Failing that much at basic biochemistry does not inspire confidence. The blurb also seem to suggest that this is just an exhibit, likely putting some algae (or even just a green liquid) into a stand. A real bioreactor for cyanobacteria or algae needs quite a bit more to work. And randomly growing cyanobacteria can also produce toxic microcystins. So there is also that. From what I remember the carbon yield (for fuel or plastic production) was also rather low. I am also skeptical that oxygen production from those volumes would be significant, but I may be wrong.

I believe the iron clusters got oxidized and destabilized under oxygen. CO is also an inhibitor and it actually binds to nitrogenases like haemoglobin, IIRC. As a side note, oxidizing and often destabilizing iron cores is one of the ways many organisms sense oxygen and quite a few regulatory factors related to oxidative stress (and also iron metabolism) are using that. Well, you could have started them! I am just sitting here, looking at physics threads and pretend to understand what swansont is explaining.

One recent worrying finding is that a cat was found to be infected, likely due to consumption of contaminated raw milk. I.e. the virus might get better at jumping from mammal to mammal, which obviously is really bad news for us (humans). https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/30/7/24-0508_article

Among those, Fe plays an outsized role for tons of redox reactions. But some of the rarer ones (including Mo and Va) have been utilized in rather critical enzymes and have not been replaced by more common metals, which in itself is interesting. If you are interested, there are whole fields on metalloenzymes, with recent approaches how various moieties in these large enzyme complexes might move during the various electron transfer processes. Not entirely my world, but it pops up frequently (and sometimes you get to work with folks on things like these). And also the work with them is annoying, just getting your media and glass ware free of metals is a nightmare.

You keep forgetting photosynthetic and other autotrophic organisms that are not plants.

There is another hint: nitrogenase are sensitive to oxygen so they do not work well if too much oxygen is present. From what I remember, nitrogen is thought to be limiting during evolution of early life and the ability to fix nitrogen would have been a massive benefit. Nitrogenases and their cofactors (especially FeMoCo) have a massive body of lit (and I dabbled a bit with it as a grad student) so there is a lot to read on this topic :).

I may be wrong but I think the general assumption is that it is the most likely nitrogen source used by early life.

Oh I see. Chances are that this around the time we started to have hypotheses how respiration actually works. Could be fun to see how folks imagined things to work and compare to what we know now.

I get that- but being a biologist rather than chemist I understand things better if I view it from a mechanistic perspective. It just helps to explain functions better and avoids confusion for reactions that might chemically look similar, but functionally are very different (as in this case). Yes, I know. His research output was low which got him in trouble regarding his teaching position. But his books were so popular, that it hardly mattered. What I meant is that in his most active years, substrate-level phosphorylation was still the basic assumption. So would be curious how much was out in lit, when he wrote the story.

I am not a chemist, so I have no idea if and how that would affect thermodynamics. It would be interesting to see when he proposed that- the idea that cells might be using chemiosmotic gradients was only proposed in the 60s or so. And it took a while longer until folks realized what bag of tricks bacteria had in that regard.

That would be very difficult. Oxygen is used as terminal electron acceptor as it is positioned favourably in terms of reduction potential and can couple with a wide range of donors. Conversely, hydrogen is pretty much on the other end, making it a good donor, but an extremely poor acceptor.

Similarly, a series of studies (ranging from PISA to smaller cohorts) suggest that folks not only read less, but the ability to read long texts (which would include books) is declining, too. Some have pointed towards the incompatibility of cell phones with perusing long texts. Anecdotally, we are also seeing a massive decline in the use of textbooks (including open source electronic text books) over the years. I am not sure what OP tries to say, as it looks fairly incoherent to me, but coupling less active reading and algorithmic pushing of short snippets of factoids (and misinformation) seems to me a much easier pathway to zombification. Also the risk of better AI in my mind is that we offload more boring stuff to them. However, doing boring stuff is part of practice and offloading too much could result in skill degradation. We can see it in class (but likely also on this forum) that being able to copy/paste arguments from somewhere does not translate to actually understanding and able to discuss these arguments.

Not quite. The net reaction of photosynthesis are two separate reactions which are not really mechanistically coupled. Specifically, it initiates an electron transfer chain (functionally similar to respiration) in order to pump protons which then chemoosmotically generate ATP. Water functions as electron donor during the water splitting event. I do think that the chemical notation masks a little bit the underlying biology, especially as carbon fixation in some bacteria happens without light, but that is neither here nor there). I probably should add that glycolysis happens in the cytosol, and the pyruvate is then delivered to hydrogenosomes. The reaction in hydrogenosomes is simpler and ATP formation is by substrate level phosphorylation, as mentioned before. Hydrogen is basically formed to re-oxidize ferredoxin, which is needed for the decarboxylation reaction from pyruvate to acetyl-CoA. Not entirely sure if I get it right but it should be something like: Pyruvate + 2 [H+] + Ferredoxin(ox) -> Acetate + H2 + Ferredoxin(red) + CO2 One way to think about this is that respiration (aerobic or anaerobic) is basically using a redox potential to energy generation, rather thinking that a particular compound being fuel or waste. Basically, if you have a nice electron donor and acceptor pair that generate a nice potential, you can use that potential by using to drive an electron transport chain, that also pumps protons out of the cell to generate a proton gradient that is then used to generate ATP. This means that depending on which pair the cell uses, the same compound can be used as donor or acceptor. Hydrogen is used by many bacteria as electron donor but is also released often in fermentation processes (or the reaction above) to essentially balance the redox budget of the cell (and as you can imagine, released hydrogen can be used by other bacteria, creating interesting cycles within bacterial communities).

A few things from above, the Krebs cycle does not provide energy, one of its functions is to generate reducing equivalents. Likewise, the cycle also does not consume or require oxygen. In aerobic organism oxygen is used as terminal electron acceptor. By coupling this redox reaction to an electron transport chain, proton pumps are are used to create a proton gradient, and that is ultimately used to generate energy (via an ATP synthetase). Anaerobic bacteria use alternative electron acceptors, to do pretty much the same. As others have noted, this is not what is happening here. While glycolysis can happen and generate energy, the interesting bit about hydrogenosomes is another process, which is highlighted in the posted figure. ATP is generated via a multi-step process, which looks like a reversal of acetate activation (which then would go into TCA), but requires ferredoxin shuttle at which H2 is formed.

I don't think that information access will be the issue of the future. It is the declining ability of folks to use it.

There have been numerous surveys among natural scientists back in the 90s and 2000s, when teaching evolution was heavily attacked by the conservative establishment in the US. The overall trend was overall lower religiosity when compared to the average population, but also interesting trends depending on discipline. IIRC the questions were more general, like "do you consider yourself religious" rather than asking things specific to a system (e.g. god or gods). I believe biologists had the lowest number of religious folks whereas, mathematicians and medical folks had higher. I am sure they must still be available somewhere.

I see what you mean. I think ecologists do make some distinction here in as the primary producers are fairly easy clear in a hierarchy, an often messy mid-layer of consumers of various sorts and the loop is closed by detrivores and decomposers. But then, ecologists are weird. I suppose all the fresh air gets into their head.

This is not really my field of study, but it is really not necessarily like that. There is an hierarchical order which can be measured, e.g. by isotope ratio mass spectrometry. The lowest trophic level are occupied by autotrophs and are also called primary producers. They are frequently plants but also algae, and certain autotrophic organisms (including photosynthetic and chemotrophic bacteria). On top are various trophic levels occupied by heterotrophs, (which ecologists call consumers) and another missing category are organisms that mineralize organic matter (I believe they are called decomposers). But obviously any food web consists of more than animal and plants (and might not have either).

Not necessarily. Delusion can be a symptom of mental conditions, but they do not have to be.

It doesn't. There are many topics you can explore, discuss and/or ask about. It is just unlikely that you will find support for supposedly paradigm-changing insights without providing equivalent evidence, if that is your sole motivation. Science is in its core a learning process. Most scientists approach questions with a learning mindset. Starting with an "I got all the answers" mindset just runs contrary to how science works and yes, for that purpose this is likely the wrong forum.

The first thing to do is present clearly what the apple cart is. I.e. provide a clear understanding of the current understanding what is the current mainstream understanding of a topic and not the pop sci or a misunderstood version of it. From there you can point out specific issues. Not just handwavy opinions, but data that suggest serious issues with the prevailing model (and again, this requires a good understanding of the current model). From there you could present publications of alternate views and highlight how those are an improvement over the prevailing one (e.g. better predictions, fewer conflicts with available data and so on). The problem is that this generally requires a fairly detailed knowledge of the current scientific state of knowledge. Reading a few articles here and there won't provide that. Remember, models were built iteratively by hundreds, if not thousands of specialists on the given topics, and toppling that requires hard work and expertise, which is unlikely obtained within a few years without formal training in the basics. Just having a different perspective with not explanatory power is not scientific or even useful. I could propose an unlimited number of ways to categorize species, but we keep using a handful (sometimes conflicting) ones which, even if flawed, have been useful in specific contexts. You have so far not made a case how your viewpoint adds anything to the discussion, nor are the critiques specific enough that would indicate a need in a paradigm shift. While you have cited some folks, much of the arguments you derive from them appear to be your interpretation and/or extrapolations which do not really relate with the actual scientific discourse. Paradigm changes are big things and the effort of tons of work. And there are always folks who think that they can provide that without putting in the work. I suggest not being one of them.

While there are studies out there suggesting strategies to convince folks of, well, reality, the issue is really that folks are bombarded by factoids to a degree that actual facts matter very little. Together with a general decline in the trust in experts (and yes, the term itself is complicated, but let's pretend it refers to folks with objective expertise in the matter) this results almost innumerable parallel realities.

Interesting that you mentioned Iran, the recent exchange between Israel and Iran really looks like muted saber rattling, where either side is not that willing to escalate (in Netanyahu's case it appeared because of US intervention).

This is actually not the point, though. Generally speaking, the terms producers and consumers are typically used in the context of food webs. A more technical term would be trophic level. Autotrophs (basically organisms able to utilize inorganic carbon) that are consumed by heterotrophs are considered producers. In this context, a venus fly trap that consumes insects would not be considered a producer, as they are obtaining carbon from other organisms. Or to put it simpler, it is not so much the inherent ability of an organism that is described with these terms, but rather their position in a given food web. The same organism could be placed in different position, if the composition of the food web shifts.

This statement is so broad so that it is basically meaningless. But the worst part is that it fundamentally misunderstands what science attempts to do. Because bias is an important concern, natural sciences tries to set up systems that is data-driven and testable. This process ideally removes the individual from the equation as anyone else can in theory replicate experiments and test the models accordingly. It matters little if someone writes a book that is immensely popular, or not. We do not blindly follow arguments, as you seem to do. Or follow superficial tendencies we believe to perceive. If we think something is off with a model, we design experiments that might violate the model and look at the outcome. Pop sci is a simplification and often gets things wrong as a consequence. Especially as the writers frequently lack the deeper understanding to recognize important nuances. If you get your vibe from those, you clearly are looking at a tiny, simplified version of science and extrapolate that massively. I think you do not realize the amount of specialization that occurs in individual studies. If you wanted to squeeze in the whole complexity of biology in every study, each paper would be at minimum a few thousand pages. That does not make any practical sense. There is no undertone, but rather each study sets up a specific context in which it explores aspects. If you do not realize that your overall assessment of science is clearly flawed.