Sequencing the Genome of a Diatom

Beverley Green, professor emerita of UBC's Department of Botany speaks on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's nationally broadcast “The Science Show” about the importance of diatoms and the potential discoveries to be made from determining the genetic sequence of algae. “These diatoms gobble up more carbon dioxide than rain forests.”

Beverley Green: “Diatoms are really very important globally, in fact it's believed that they've had a significant effect on the Earth's atmosphere and the temperature of the Earth over the last 200 million years. The reason for this is that these are one of the major group of organisms that take up CO₂, they fix it by photosynthesis and then they sink to the bottom of the ocean and that takes that CO₂ completely out of circulation. So one of the big contributions of the diatoms is to fix that CO₂ and get it out of the way, out of the atmosphere. In fact, it's been calculated that, together with the dinoflagellates, they probably fix more CO₂ than all the rainforests.”

Links:

• The Science Show - October 9, 2004 - listen to the broadcast of the program in either RealPlayer or Windows Media Player


• Diatom Genome Sequenced - read the transcript of the interview

Posted by Daniel Mosquin at 3:35 PM on October 13, 2004

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