I have less free time now as I've started a fellowship which will lead into a PhD. But I will continue to read articles and make videos. Just at a slower pace now.

The new report is now scientist can artificially synthesize starch by light without cell, it's reported to be about 8.5 fold more efficiency than plants' photosynthesis.

c4 is basically just putting a filter into a factory conveyor so you get only, say copper plates, instead of mostly iron plates and sometimes copper

What I am worried about is how c4 trees would affect weather patterns, especially in rainforest areas. Rainforest trees contribute a huge amount of water into the atmosphere, so reducing the amount they release could cause entire regions to have drastically different climate conditions. No point to planting a billion new trees in an area if they just end up killing themselves or causing a region nearby to die out. Was it stated in the video how much the c4 lowers the release of water compared to c3?

A note from a plant scientist. Plants are fairly well balanced organisims, the oxygen pathway produces free radicals which are important in defence. The defence pathway I'm studying actually doesn't work without light and we have to control for light levels otherwise we get variance in our experimental data. The oxygen pathway isn't just a waste pathway and some would argue it's a pathway that produces vital molecules. It's still an open question in plant science. C4 plants have been a major project for many years with limited success. There are other low hanging fruit to improve water retention. I'm of the opinion that disease which leads to loss of 30% of crops worldwide is a much better target as there are lots of little problems we can easily solve as opposed to one great white whale. However, successful C3 to C4 would be amazing. It may just be not possible or of possible it may be ineffective.

Underrated chanel

I just wonder what you're majoring, chemistry or physics? because both of your physics and chemistry videos are so great.. great job

That was absolutely amazing. I had no idea this issue existed and the science was so far advanced. Very much appreciate you filling us in, and with such top drawer production values too.

These C4 plants would be more useful on future human colonies/ space habitats where their ability to more efficiently capture CO2 from the atmosphere as it is a much cheaper alternative to scrubbers.

If currently known, a video explaining the evolution of cells and organisms from the molecular level would be deeply fascinating. In the same spirit of quantum fields to molecules. Sounds like a possible incomplete area of study, though. No idea! Great videos. My favorite channel on all of KZfaq. The only one I have notifications on for because I can’t wait to see more.

A C4 tree might actually cause a slight paradox. The anatomy of tree would have the leaves and xylem layer benefit from the better metabolism, but remember that the woody tissue in "trees" is composed of cells that have had their central vacuole build up so much waste the cell becomes non-viable and is then left behind as the xylem layer moves outward. The key is that the majority of the waste in the central vacuole is bound RuBP. So in a way you'd create a... fern? Less wood, more green and leaves... carbon capture via composted leaves?

From BBC Future: C3 plants lose 97% of the water they take up through their roots to transpiration. So the C4 pathway is ideal for the hotter drought conditions that are increasingly prevalent owing to climate change. C4 plants are so successful, especially in tropical savannahs, that they are responsible for as much as 30% of all terrestrial carbon fixing, even though they make up a tiny percentage of plants (just 5%) . Some of the crops that we cultivate use the C4 pathway, including corn (maize), sugarcane, sorghum and millet. But many of the most popular crops, including wheat and rice, are C3 plants. Their yields suffer in hotter drier conditions - just where and when we need to increase them.

I'm a software engineer and have limited plant biology knowledge, therefore thank you for your video. It was complicated but informative. The future sounds exciting.

what an awesome channel, I thoroughly hope you see 1m subs within a year as this is some of the best content on youtube!

dude, your stuff in this channel is absolute gold.

I like to consider myself a smart person, ready to learn about such a dramatic topic as a problem in one of the most important processes on the planet I wasn't expecting to be this far out of my depth in less than a minute This is brilliant

Worth mentioning the carbon sequestration in forest ecosystems doesn’t put that carbon in the soil. Planting trees is fine but over emphasized. We also have to restore native grasslands

Your channel is incomprehensibly better than most of the KZfaq.

Thorough explanations along with comprehensive animations. Very nice 👌

Insane Video. The quality is amazing! Great work.

The problem is your "flaw" is based on your POV not the plant. Your explanation even says as a result of it getting too hot this "flaw" makes the plant lose more water, but loosing water decreases the temp of the plant. C4 is more efficient running but cost the plants much more in order to make. It's all about trade offs, not flaws.

I have no clue what's going in in the video but your presentation of it is great so I just kept watching

Veeery underrated channel Will probably binge everything u have

Watching this, I saw that I needed to refresh my memory on the details of photosynthesis. And fortunately "But Why" has a video on photosynthesis.

This is a top tier channel, i like it when I find things I didn’t know I wanted.

what if we create c4 trees that are so efficient they cause a rapid ice age...

This is the best channel I have ever found

This is why I support GMOs. When used correctly, it can save us tons of resources in water and energy.

Very cool video. Super informative, well researched and nice visuals.

Thank you so much for making this. It's beautiful.

I live in Minnesota, land of 10k lakes. We finally had an end to a summer long drought. A drought, in a place where you usually don't even need to walk a mile to find a water source.

Very good content - keep it at this level!

Very good short review of the topic!

3:20 that inhale lmao

Awesome content you got here in this channel!

This is probably the best channel that goes in-depth science without it just being a lecture-form. He's made a balance between the entertainment of animations and information. However, I think for someone just getting into science or have a basic knowledge, this would be a bit too higher level and would be more appealed with the more popular channels like Veritasium or Vsauce which often dumb-downs information. I would still say this is a much higher quality channel than any other popular channel.

The quality of your videos is insane

this video sorely needs a different title/thumbnail. you deserve way more views on it

Beautiful work!

life doesn't care about perfection, life is fine with "good enough".

commenting for the algorithm, underrated channel bro

Your channel is amazing!

Arren Bar-Even had some very impressive papers surrounding synthetic biology approaches to carbon fixation. One of his papers from 2010 explored the possibility of a carbon fixation cycle which completely bypasses RuBisCO and instead uses the faster, more specific PEP carboxylase for all carbon fixation, and which shuffles OAA back to PEP with net carbon addition. Essentially it's a really nifty replacement of the entire Calvin cycle

*repeats what everyone else has said about how cool this channel is*

This is fascinating! how common are c3 to c4 plants? any examples... and what about CAM plants?

Amazing channel, can't believe I just found it.

I'm just beginning the video but off the top of my head it seems like a great idea to do this. You don't want to start glycolysis while photosynthesis is Super Active the plant is making and using nadh and ATP which is available for other cellular processes so you don't need glycolysis to be going on while you're running the Calvin cycle.

This whole concept as well as the science being done to try new things, is wildly fascinating and truly awesome

Awesome animation and well explained Love from india :)

Chemist here, love your channel !

As someone equally interested in biology, physics, and chemistry, this channel is the holy grail of science channels

Question: If you found a way to allow for s plant to not die via heat, could you make a plant more efficient by changing the pigment to a higher wavelength then green, allowing for more high energy light to be absorbed? (I know this wasn’t in the video, but I am just wondering.) [I love you physics videos by the way, and this one was just as interesting, I love the animation style and intuitive explanation!]

Very good video!

biggest gem on KZfaq

I can't claim to know much about plant physiology, but I would think long and hard, and think a little bit more, before I started mucking about with "improving" something like this. Systems tend to moderate themselves, and all systems tend towards equilibrium. Do we really know enough about the planetary ecosystem to make changes like this?

Awesome video

Amazing channel

Xerophyte plants are those that need little to no water. They even develop ways to store water. Cacti and snake plants fit into this category.

Could the lack of C4 trees be down to the need for transpiration to keep water/nutrients flowing to the canopy? I.e. stomata need to open to get nutrients up there, so there’s less benefit to reducing stomata opening?

It won't help a forest (not a single tree) sequester more Carbon on a longer timescale because what is limiting a mature forest is its crowding (it becomes light and nutrient-limited as it crowds), increasing the growth rate would just help young forests to reach this state faster.

Changing the efficiency of plants would effect which species grow where and in what quantities, this could potentially totally change every environment on earth for good or bad.

This is better than how some professors explain things.

If evapotranspiration is reduced will that have any net effect on the hydrologic cycle?

I wonder if it's possible to combine C4 plants with the modified C3 chloroplasts.

Have you ever considered that this inhibitor is actually necessary to regulating the amount of energy the plants produce because of some evolutionary event in the past? Like perhaps some of the previous ice ages that were caused by too many plants reducing the amount of C02 in the atmosphere?

So helpful in my biology studies, but I still need you to pause so that my brain can comprehend the terms and processes 😅

Never forget that life is about finding a way that works until it doesn’t anymore, not optimization. 75% efficiency is better than none at all, and as long as the plants reach the age to reproduce then the rest doesn’t matter. There could be - or have been - some benefit to what we now consider a defect. I’m not an expert on these things, just find them fun and interesting. Still, it seems like a few (not all, a few) experts begin to think they know more than what they’ve learned and studied, like they’ve gained an intuition on how things - should - be and that such things must be that way. We might know the ingredients, we might know the process, but we don’t know the subtleties and unique changes made that create the product we see before us. We see a finished product in a vacuum and, through a small amount of outside information, determine that things have worked out a certain way. We could very well be right. Just don’t forget we could also very well be wrong. I will finish watching this video. I have a horrible habit of trying to answer the title before I watch the video in its entirety.

Very interesting! 🧐

I would love to see a video on how blood works and maybe how to improve it

Man out here correcting biology

Rubisco was earlier known as the Russian Biscuit Company. They shortened their name around the time they copied the Hydrox chocolate sandwich cookie. The Oleg keeps ice cream from getting lonely.

[Edit: P.S. you earned yourself a new sub with this one! Fantastic discussion!] 0:50 - "But why?" Because it still works. =) This, among a dozen other things in nature, are fantastic evidence that evolution is indeed random in nature. No competent designer would design something this deliberately inefficient and broken, right? And yet, our universe is such that, despite the inefficiency, it's still good enough to get generation after generation to reproduce and pass on that broken jalopy of a gene. Our primate ancestors used to be able to make vitamin C (we can't). Our primate ancestors used to be able to break down uric acid, which causes gout (we can't). Even our anatomy contains a strange nerve in our necks that takes the longest, most circuitous route to the tissue it innervates, the recurrent laryngeal. Ever get a stuffy nose? Chimps have holes in their skulls at the base of the sinuses that let that stuff drain. Our sinuses have holes too, but they're at the top of the sinuses. Brilliant! Evolution is a really fascinating topic!

I barely understand any of this and have no use for this knowledge. I was captivated the entire time though.

Very good

I think an ideal test-vehicle for this would be cultivated bamboo for wood production in moderate/arid grassland areas. They don't reproduce easily (via pollination), and produce usable wood quickly.

What do you think about using black leaf photosynthesis instead of green? If it can be implemented successfully, it could absorb much more energy from the sun.

Don't overlook the importance of the pigments in plants. These absorb light of a specific wavelength to switch between the covalent states of carbon atoms. For example, when a plant absorbs more infrared later into the evening from atmospheric scattering. This signals to plant to switch from producing oxygen to carbon-dioxide to make up for the difference in energy required due to the lack of blue spectrum light at night. Essentially putting the plant to "sleep".

Awesome

Apparently the Paulownia tree does use the C4 pathway.

How am I barely discovering this channel now!?!?

If we stop or decrease the amount of water that leaves the plants leaves, wont that affect the climate over that given landmass? As in less water vapers form clouds over c4 rich landmasses and thus cloud production will slow in those areas, decreasing waterfall in the downwind areas? This might be a bit extreme but still...

Isn't the undesired byproduct also a possible storage mechanic? Similar to fat in mammals?

Plants thanks for the updates

My main concern regarding produce isn't how much carbon the plant can take in, but quantity/quality of nutrients the plant stores in the fruit. Other studies are supposedly showing that our current produce is lacking in nutritional value compared to several decades ago due to poor soil. The plant's ability to respirate isn't going to increase nutrient content of the soil it's drawing from.

CAM! Surely CAM would be better if we want more heat tolerance?

I wonder if it would be easier to somehow implant the c4 pathways into an already existing tree, or to just grab a c4 exhibiting plant species and modifying it to be more tree-like. Maybe it could be achieved by implanting genes that somehow cancel whatever process tells it to stop growing?

Learnt c4 from sugarcane, i plant it at here, java island

Fantastic! Incredible! Amazing! Astounding! Astonishing! Mighty! Marvelous! Better than Marvel's superheroes movies!

so, what you're saying is, so that plants could live more efficiently, we need to increase co2 emissions? works for me!

from an ecological perspective. If the temperature is rising and plants helps cool down the environment by giving up some of its water into the air then it makes better balance wise. So curious by replacing c3 with c4 photosynthesis how will it impact the environment. If c4 plants are more efficient, why are there not more plants using it except in deserts

Desert C4 plants have more sunlight, negating the need to save carbohydrates like more common plants who may need that “mistake” rubisco makes in order to survive long periods of cloudiness or low sunlight

I read the title and immediately asked "but why tho?" and then looked at the channel. Best first impression of a channel I've ever gotten lmao Edit: Second best first impression, nothing will ever top High Boi

crazy that i learned about this in freshman science class

I feel like this has super cool potential but the trick is you would need to intervene in many species and varieties simultaneously to avoid giving any specific ones competitive advantage and destroying the existing genetic diversity which makes these species more resistant to diseases. So that seems at least to me to be the biggest potential pitfall - that if you intervene, you risk not intervening enough.

can't they find the gene that encodes rubisco and change it around so it can't make glycolate

c4 seems pretty powerful might as well pull for it while the banner's still running

so c4 photosynthesis is in cacti and xeric plants? i was thinking if their photosynthesis can be improved as well so that they can live in shady areas to prevent sunburns

Good luck, we sure need something like C4 forests I say

Where did you get your chart of atmospheric CO2 that shows 7000 ppm 500 million years ago? About minute 1.

There are already tree species that absorb more carbon naturally as well, but I wonder which methods they use and if it would interfere