Month: September 2022

The Guardian view on farming: not about food View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE continues on biomineralization from last weekend, focusing on geometry, energetics and the mechanism of bio-fabrication of these organic crystals. Most of these crystal structures are fabricated by microscopic marine creatures, which affect global carbon cycles. Nanofabrication in a commercial setting is a hot topic, and nature illustrates that efficient solutions to difficult problems are possible via the endless inventivity of evolution. View in LinkedIn

COMPLEXITY FROM SEEMING SIMPLICITY. "The vast array of organisms are now known to synthesize inorganic materials and more than 60 different biogenic minerals have been identified to date, most of them are calcium carbonates, calcium phosphates, silicates, iron oxides and iron sulfides. Unicellular organisms such as bacteria and algae also are capable of synthesizing inorganic nanomaterials, both intra- and extracellularly." https://lnkd.in/es5DATt View in LinkedIn

GEOMETRIC MISFITS. "Many biomaterials are organized from nanoscale to the macroscopic scale...to give hierarchical materials that are sculpted with complex form -- spirals, spheroids and skeletons...with apparent disregard for the rigid geometric symmetry of their inorganic constituents." https://lnkd.in/eY-FGha View in LinkedIn

MINIMAL ENERGY SURFACES. "Mackay has recently described the 'flexicrystallography' structure and symmetry properties of about 50 periodic minimal-energy surfaces, and how they allow one to transcend the boundary of traditional crystallography and the 230 classic space groups, to encompass periodic curved surfaces found in soft structures such as liquid crystal mesophases and biological assemblies." https://lnkd.in/eY-FGha View in LinkedIn

MINIMAL ENERGY SURFACES. "Mackay has recently described the 'flexicrystallography' structure and symmetry properties of about 50 periodic minimal-energy surfaces, and how they allow one to transcend the boundary of traditional crystallography and the 230 classic space groups, to encompass periodic curved surfaces found in soft structures such as liquid crystal mesophases and biological assemblies." https://lnkd.in/eY-FGha View in LinkedIn

ENERGETICS. "It stands to reason that living organisms modulate crystal growth by manipulating the energy landscapes. A complete physical picture of biomineral growth requires a description of the geometry and stereochemistry of the interaction between the crystal lattice and the organic modifiers, the magnitude of the interaction energy, the effect of that interaction on the energy landscape, and the impact of the change in the landscape on crystallization." https://lnkd.in/eVX4ANS View in LinkedIn

ENERGETIC COST. "Calcification is an energy-dependent process and so is ultimately dependent on photo- synthesis in the obligately photolithotrophic coccolithophores...the absolute minimum energy cost for the conversion of 1 mol CO2 to carbohydrate is 8.43 mol of absorbed photons (400−700 nm)." https://lnkd.in/e2i9eMi View in LinkedIn

PHOTONS PER MOLECULE. "The minimum stoichiometry of a CCM is 1 mol ATP per mol CO2 which, with cyclic photophosphorylation as the ATP source, with 1.14 mol photons needed to generate 1 mol ATP means a total of 8.43 + 1.14 = 9.57 mol photons per mol CO2...gives a total cost of photosynthetic growth of at least 15.5 mol photons per mol CO2." https://lnkd.in/e2i9eMi View in LinkedIn

ENERGETICS. "There seems to be a minimum energy cost of 1.5 mol ATP per mol CaCO3 deposited. This involves a photon cost of 1.71 photons per CaCO3 with cyclic electron flow generating ATP, i.e. 11% of the cost of photosynthetic growth...the calcification cost is 19% that of photosynthetic growth." https://lnkd.in/e2i9eMi View in LinkedIn