Meet ‘Chonkus,’ the Algae Trying to End the Climate Crisis
An international team of scientists (including experts from Harvard University) have described a carbon dioxide-hungry algae nicknamed “Chonkus.” This carbon-hungry algae could help sequester carbon, especially in industrial settings.
Because this algae naturally lives near hydrothermal vents, it’s used to high temperatures and densities, and its fast-growing nature (as well as its habit of concentrating CO2 before rapidly sinking), makes the cyanobacteria a prime candidate for combatting climate change.
This research only reaffirms that science shouldn’t ignore the billions of years of evolution that has already help mold some pretty incredible, climate change-fighting microbes.
If humans want to return to a more stable climate, they’ll need to engineer some inventive solutions—whether that’s perovskite solar cells, iron-air batteries, or even fusion energy. However, we also shouldn‘t sleep on Mother Nature. After all, she’s kept things running pretty smoothly for many thousands of years.
One of the more intriguing options for carbon capture from the natural world is the cyanobacteria living near hydrothermal vents. These areas, which are naturally inundated with high levels of carbon dioxide, could possibly yield evolutionary strategies that help manage increased CO2 levels.
At least, that was the hunch of scientists at Harvard’s Wyss Institute. Then, they met Chonkus.
In a new paper published in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology, Max Schubert and Brett Tierney from Harvard (along with other team members) described a cyanobacteria UTEX 3222, which they nicknamed “Chonkus” due to its fast-growing nature and large individual cells.
Collected in February of 2023 near the Italian island of Vulcano—a marine environment known for high levels of CO2—Chonkus grows rapidly in the presence of the greenhouse gas. And, more crucially, it also sinks rapidly, collecting carbon in a dense “green peanut butter,” according to the press release. Because it’s used to hanging out near hydrothermal vents, it can also tolerate high temperatures, which makes the algae well-suited for carbon capture in industrial applications.
“Many of the traits that we observed in Chonkus aren’t inherently useful in their natural environment,” Tierney said in a press statement. “Being able to grow to a high density at higher temperatures is very helpful in the industrial environments that we use to manufacture many goods and products, and can help sequester more carbon. 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.”
According to the researchers, this natural process could save industries 15 to 30% of the energy costs typically used to concentrate and dry carbon—and the possible benefits don’t end there. A 2022 review of using algae for carbon sequestration found that employing cyanobacteria in this way could also produce useful products like biofuels and bioplastics. Chonkus also joins other bacteria found in caves that can crystalize carbon in just 10 days, despite that process usually taking up to 10 years under normal circumstances.
Samples of Chonkus—along with another carbon-sequestering microbe called UTEX 3221—are currently cryopreserved at the Culture Collection of Algae at the University of Texas and publicly available for use by other researchers. Tierney’s non-profit Two Frontiers Project also hopes that microbes can be leveraged not only for things like carbon sequestration, but in other areas of climate concern like the restoration of coral reef ecosystems.
The problems looming over our heads are very large, but some of these problems could have incredibly small solutions.
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