GEOG 311-3-3 Environmental Management

CO2 fixing microbes are the species primarily engaged in complexing the inorganic carbon dioxide to organic carbon compounds. There are many microorganisms from archaeal and bacterial domain that can fix carbon dioxide through six known CO2 fixing pathways. These organisms are ubiquitous and can survive in wide range of aerobic and anaerobic habitats. This review focuses on the prior research, that has been conducted in this field and presents a summarized overview of all the mechanisms (along with their genes and enzymes) used by these microbes for CO2 incorporation. In addition, this review provides a better understanding of diversity and taxonomy of CO2 fixing microorganisms. The information presented here will motivate researchers to further explore the diversity of CO2 fixing microorganisms as well as to decipher the underlying mechanisms of CO2 utilization.

Carbon sustains life. It’s the basis of all of life’s building blocks—the nucleic acids, proteins, carbohydrates, and lipids that make up our cells. Carbon is also at the heart of one of the most pressing issues on our planet: climate change. Atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane levels are at an all time high, trapping heat in the atmosphere.

Microbes are another player in climate. They transform the state of carbon, by sequestering carbon from and releasing carbon into the atmosphere, oceans, and biosphere. Climate change shapes microbes and microbes shape the climate.

E. coli is on a diet. Researchers have created a strain of the lab workhorse bacterium — full name Escherichia coli — that grows by consuming carbon dioxide instead of sugars or other organic molecules.

The achievement is a milestone, say scientists, because it drastically alters the inner workings of one of biology’s most popular model organisms. And in the future, CO2-eating E. coli could be used to make organic carbon molecules that could be used as biofuels or to produce food. Products made in this way would have lower emissions compared with conventional production methods, and could potentially remove the gas from the air. T