Brown algae take up large amounts of carbon dioxide from the air and release parts of the carbon contained therein back into the environment in mucous form. This mucus is hard to break down for other ocean inhabitants, thus the carbon is removed from the atmosphere for a long time, as researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen now show. They reveal that the algal mucus called fucoidan is particularly responsible for this carbon removal and estimate that brown algae could thus remove up to 550 million tons of carbon dioxide from the air every year – almost the amount of Germany's entire annual greenhouse gas emissions.
褐藻通过固定大量二氧化碳,从而从大气中提取这种温室气体,是全球碳循环中的重要参与者。此外,由于死褐藻的微生物分解速度比其他海洋植物慢,褐藻固定的二氧化碳在海洋中停留的时间要长得多。因此,来自马克斯·普朗克海洋微生物研究所、不来梅大学海洋环境科学中心和其他研究所的科学家们探索了褐藻降解如此缓慢的原因。他们发现,只有高度专业化的细菌才能在一百多种酶的帮助下进行降解。
褐藻是多细胞真核生物,已经独立于动植物进化超过十亿年。褐藻发明了令人着迷的多种身体模式和生殖特征,其分子基础尚未完全探索。我们正在利用这些神秘生物的丰富的形态和性特征来阐明真核生命树中多细胞性的起源和性别决定的演变。