• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Say Hello To Chonkus, The Sizeable Cyanobacterium That Could Combat Climate Change

November 9, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

In volcanic ocean vents off the coast of Italy, researchers have discovered a new strain of cyanobacteria that could pack a particularly effective punch when it comes to capturing carbon dioxide, one of the driving forces of climate change.

The cyanobacterium, or alga, is officially known as UTEX 3222, but the team behind its discovery have given it the far catchier nickname of “Chonkus” – because, in the presence of carbon dioxide, this thing grows very, very quickly.

Advertisement

Chonkus was first collected in seawater samples taken from shallow volcanic seeps near the island of Vulcano. Since these vents get a healthy dose of both sunlight and gases, researchers suspected that they might make a good place to search for photosynthetic organisms well-adapted to not only thrive in the presence of CO2, but even capture it.

“An incredible amount of microbial diversity exists out there in the world, and we believe it’s more efficient to seek out the microbes that have already evolved to succeed in human-relevant environments rather than trying to engineer all of the traits we want into lab-grown E. coli bacteria,” said Braden Tierney, co-corresponding author of the study describing the findings, in a statement.

The seawater samples were taken to a lab in Boston where, upon growing the cyanobacteria within in familiar conditions – including lots of CO2 – researchers found and isolated Chonkus.

Experiments revealed that Chonkus was a fast grower – much faster, in fact, than other fast-growing strains of alga, capable of doubling its colony size in just over 2 hours when in liquid. Even the individual cells grew to higher density and within these swollen cyanobacteria, the team also found storage granules packed with carbon.

Advertisement

Those traits by themselves make Chonkus a desirable candidate for sequestering carbon, but it turns out this strain has a triple whammy up its sleeve – it also sinks much more quickly than other fast-growing strains of cyanobacteria. 

Capturing large amounts of CO2 and sending it to the seafloor for quick collection makes Chonkus pretty appealing to those exploring how we can use what nature has already provided us with to tackle the problem of climate change.

 The

Chonkus, on the right, sinks in a test tube of water much more quickly than another common cyanobacterial strain.

Image credit: Ted Chavkin

“The traits inherent in the naturally evolved cyanobacteria strains described in this research have the potential to be used both in industry and the environment, including biomanufacturing of useful carbon-based products or sinking large volumes of carbon to the ocean floor,” said study author George Church (who is also the co-founder of the company trying to bring back the woolly mammoth).

“While further modifications could be made to enhance these microbes’ abilities, harnessing billions of years of evolution is a significant leg up in humanity’s urgent need to mitigate and reverse climate change.”

Advertisement

The study is published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. No ‘magic wand’ to fix Lebanon crisis, new prime minister says
  2. Australia’s Gold Rush Ended In The 19th Century. So Why Are People Still Finding So Much Gold?
  3. Is Ireland’s Cave Of The Cats The Birthplace Of Halloween?
  4. What’s The Fastest Animal In The Ocean?

Source Link: Say Hello To Chonkus, The Sizeable Cyanobacterium That Could Combat Climate Change

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Colossal’s “Dire Wolves” Are Now 6 Months Old – And They’ve Doubled In Size
  • How To Fake A Fossil: Find Out More In Issue 36 Of CURIOUS – Out Now
  • Is It True Earth Used To Take 420 Days To Orbit The Sun?
  • One Of The Ocean’s “Most Valuable Habitats” Grows The Only Flowers Known To Bloom In Seawater
  • World’s Largest Digital Camera Snaps 2,104 New Asteroids In 10 Hours, Mice With 2 Dads Father Their Own Offspring, And Much More This Week
  • Simplest Explanation For “Anomalous” Signals Coming From Underneath Antarctica Ruled Out
  • “Lizard Shampoo” And Pagan Texts Suggest “Dark Age” Medicine Wasn’t So Dark After All
  • Japanese Macaques May Mourn Their Dead – As Long As They’re Not Maggot-Infested
  • This Is What You’d Hear If You Listened To Voyager’s Golden Record NASA Sent To Interstellar Space
  • RFK Jr’s New Vaccine Advisors Just Recommended Fall Flu Vaccines – But There’s A Catch
  • Controversial World-First Project To Create Human DNA From Scratch Takes First Steps
  • Humans Weren’t The First Species To Travel Around The Moon. They Lost This Race To An Unexpected Animal
  • When You Hack A Shark, You’re Exploiting A Glitch Billions Of Years In The Making
  • Wellness Whales, A New Blood Type, And A DJ Set From Space
  • Hate Flying Ants? We Used To Have Ones The Size Of Hummingbirds
  • ‘Tis The Season To See Titan Cast A Shadow On Saturn – Especially If You Are In America
  • World’s Bravest Vets Put Full Metal Dental Crown On A Bear For The First Time
  • “Spider Rain”: The Bizarre Phenomenon That’ll Send Arachnophobes Into A Spin
  • Scientists Gave Mice A Human “Language Gene” And Something Curious Unfolded
  • Surveillance Of People Is More “Pervasive And Normalised” Than Previously Thought, Endangering Our Privacy
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version