Transcriber: Ahmed Alhawaj Reviewer: Emma Gon
Algae and escape for some of you, it might be not very obvious.
Why?
What is the connection here?
So let me take you to a world and explain to you and stitch together
a picture of the most important small organisms on this planet.
If we start with migration, if you think about migration,
always mankind was always moving throughout the planet.
It started with the movement out of Africa,
then it expanded to North America, but also within Europe.
Always, we have a history of movement, which extended until nowadays,
and this movement always needs energy.
I don't know whether ever you have thought about
where this energy's coming from.
Energy for muscles, energy for animals,
energy also for vehicles and airplanes.
But where is it coming from?
And if you think about it,
you will see it all comes from the solar energy.
So I call it the "canned solar energy."
Because what happens?
Humans were moving, so they wanted to take the energy along.
They needed to "can" it.
So it could be the seeds, the grains from early days,
down to fossil fuels nowadays,
and all of it has its origins in the solar energy.
I'm not going to talk about aliens today;
time is limited.
But also I could maybe explain why the aliens are green.
So maybe later on we can talk about this in the coffee break.
So, the beginning.
What is this?
How was it possible that we on the planet are able to use this stored solar energy?
So it all started millions of years ago with the first green organisms,
which by mutation developed a possibility to store the solar energy
and to build up biomass.
By accident, of course, unfortunately, they also built up oxygen.
And oxygen at that time was very toxic.
So most of the organisms died again, but some survived
and continued to produce oxygen,
which then produced the atmosphere we have.
By this energy which was available,
all of a sudden,
bigger organisms could develop,
and the first collaboration between green and non-green organisms started.
So collaboration is something nature was using over and over again
in order to enhance development and evolution on this planet.
So what happened?
Some of this small non-green organisms kind of went into a symbiosis
with the green organisms and used the carbohydrates -
so the stored energy, which the green organisms could store -
and used it for energy consumption.
So from this, the first land plants developed,
which means that more or less the chloroplasts,
which are making the plants green nowadays are ancient algae
which have been used in a symbiotic collaboration.
And it is still there.
If you have a look, for example,
lichens, which are growing on trees, and on rocks,
and in very unfavorable environments,
those lichens are a symbiosis between mushrooms and algae.
So the mushroom, the fungus, is getting energy,
carbon sources from the algae.
The algae is being protected by the outer skin of the fungus
in a moist environment.
So it is a very nice symbiosis, and both of them benefit from it.
This one I like a lot.
I mean, it's not really a collaboration between a sheep and a houseleek,
but what you can see is a snail, and a snail lives in the water.
It's green because it is having chlorophyll.
And also what you can see from this very nice picture -
the snail is called "sea sheep."
And what you can see from this very nice picture
that also nature has some master models, which it follows over and over again.
One additional example from this one, which I like a lot,
it is the sea snail.
This one, it looks as if it was a leaf.
And the particular thing about this, it is really still an actual collaboration
between active algae and a snail, a sea snail.
So what happens?
When the sea snail is hatching, it is not green.
It has to feed on algae,
but soon after that it starts to incorporate
the chloroplasts from the algae into its own tissue,
and it deposits it there and it can make it viable.
So at one point the snail starts eating it all.
It is green, and it gets the energy from the incorporated chloroplasts.
So it's very interesting to see that - that it's still possible,
this collaboration between algae and any other life form.
Maybe, one day, also we will be green.
Of course, we have to expand our surface, but you never know.
Now, where are we at?
What is the situation of the planet?
We've heard about this today, negative news.
So also I will a bit continue on this.
We are champions in consuming this canned solar energy.
Could be food, could be fuel, so we are really champions.
But what are we doing by this? We are destroying our environment.
In the early 1960s, the Green Revolution started.
What was it?
Humans started to develop crops which are delivering a lot of biomass,
a lot of food.
We were using a lot of fertilizers
in order to produce more and more and more.
But by doing this,
so the idea initially was to eradicate poverty and malnutrition.
But did we achieve it?
No, rather we destroyed the environment by doing this.
So the future scenario, as you know, either it could be a desert,
we have a planet of deserts,
or we will have water world, complete flooding of big areas.
And if you look at literature - or scientific literature,
you will find proof for all of this.
For example, one number just to illustrate this:
Until 2000, so at the end of this century, 2100,
the sea level could rise between half a meter and two meters,
and this is because we produce so much CO2
that the temperature is rising and so on and so forth.
So you know that.
But now in this situation, where we don't know where to go
or maybe how to deal with all of these environmental problems,
the question again is: Could algae help?
And this is why I'm here,
to show you a little bit the possibilities we have with algae.
So algae are growing 10 times faster than any land plant.
They are inhabiting extreme environments.
You can find them in very hot areas, but also in glaciers.
And by living in these extreme environments,
they have to protect themselves
against the threat or the stress from the environment.
So they made up very interesting strategies
on how to survive in extreme environments.
Algae are producing 50% of the oxygen we are consuming every day.
So think about when you remember what we just heard
before with every breath.
You can feel yourself; you can improve your situation.
But with every second breath you take oxygen,
which was produced by algae.
They are virtually invisible; they are very small.
You need a microscope to see them except in a situation
where you have algae blooms.
So very often algae are called "bad," and you have the algae blooms.
This is what you can see on the picture.
This the Gulf of Biscay with these cloudy areas in there
with a lot of algae destroying the fish there.
But in general, they're good. They produce our oxygen.
And they are at the base of the aquatic food chain.
So I want to elaborate a little bit more on this.
The blue ecosystem is fuel to the whole ecosystem,
and the food web within there is fueled by the sun.
Imagine the yearly fish catch is about 90 million tons of fish.
In order to generate this,
nature has to produce three times more biomass,
and at the end of the food chain, it's always algae.
It's always the sunlight which is powering this.
So about 280 million tons of algae have to be eaten
in order that we can catch 90 million tons of fish.
What are we doing with the fish?
There is a lot of bycatch.
Another number in Norway, they have about 250,000 tons of bycatch.
What is being done with it? They don't throw it away.
Either it's used for protein source for, again, aquaculture.
And also what is very important, even getting more and more important,
is omega-3 fatty acids.
So from these 250,000 tons,
about 3,500 tons of fatty acids are being extracted.
If you would do the same as I told, the algae at the base of all of this,
and the algae are also producing the omega-3 fatty acids.
It's not the fish.
The fish just takes it up and stores it, and we are using it afterwards.
So if you would go to the bottom of all of that and use the algae right away
without killing any fish,
then you could even get three times the amount of omega-3 fatty acids.
And this is something we should start thinking about.
We should try to use them.
The problem is only they are so small,
so we have to make up technologies on how to use them.
And the algae can do much more.
Just briefly, they can be used in food and feed and nutrition and also in energy.
So algae because they are living in extreme environments,
they can produce food colorants - natural blue like the blue gummy bear.
It's made from a color from an algae.
But also proteins, and jet fuel in the end could be done from algae
because millions and millions of years ago
they were the basis of our current fuel.
We just need to make up how to do it again and we don't have so much time.
Another thing is environmental pollution.
Algae can capture CO2, they can clean wastewater
and even they can accumulate a radioactive nucleotides,
which, for example, are spilled into the ocean in Fukushima,
so algae could be used to accumulate it
and then trash it in a defined place and not spill it throughout the world.
Urban living.
Another thing we try to make our cities green and more lively
and better for life, and we need to generate oxygen within our cities.
So one very nice idea are these recreational pavilions,
which are fueled by algae and sunlight,
so within there you would have an elevated oxygen concentration,
and people, if there smoke outside,
could go inside, kind of recreate a bit and then continue their way.
So there are many fancy ideas now coming up also
where algae can be used in future.
And of course, and this was in the introduction as well,
going to outer space,
and there are some projects in the US,
also in Russia, where they try to mimic -
how is it possible to have autonomic life in outer space?
And always the problem is how to get enough oxygen.
Because if you rely on machines, these machines, they could break down.
As long as algae have sunlight they would produce your oxygen.
So, in general, if you calculate,
it would be enough to have about 40 liters of an algae suspension
to make one human being - to keep up the oxygen supply.
40 liters is not much. Imagine it's four buckets.
So you go with your four buckets, you exhale into the bottom,
on the top you get the oxygen you need, you're fine.
By the same time -
(Laughs)
the same time those 40 liters
would generate about 200 grams of biomass every day.
Of course, you should not kind of eat them all right away
because then there's more oxygen.
But if you think further, you could of course have several of these buckets.
And if you compare it to trees, for example, human being,
the oxygen we need is generated by two to three trees, we would need.
If this tree dies, you need 15 years, no breathing, until the tree regrows.
Now, here with the algae, it takes one or two weeks
from one single cell to fill your 40 liters again.
So you see there are many advantages of the algae.
So now they can do all of this,
and we've heard some of these stories for many years already,
but what is realistic?
What can we do, and why is it not there yet?
So you have to compare it in a way to agriculture.
These are wild types.
We are working with these unicellular organisms.
They are wild types.
2,000 years ago when domestication of crop plants started,
the crops had a few grains on a grass.
It wasn't more than 2,000 years it took us
to come up with these land plants and the crops we have nowadays.
We don't have time to wait for 2,000 years.
Another example is Penicillium.
It was found out the action of Penicillium 50 years ago.
In these last 50 years, productivity increased by 5,000 times.
Imagine, just 50 years.
So now we are at the next step. Algae can do so much.
We just have to find out how to work with them.
We have to look at nature.
What are the tricks nature was putting on?
What are the molds? What are the templates?
And then we will be able to exploit and tap this potential of algae.
So I'm convinced that algae will be the Green Revolution 2.0.
Thank you.
(Applause)