Reading Room / algae & cyanobacteria
Growing molecular reads
Algae & Cyanobacteria, the blue and the carbon.
The blue you can take away with you, the carbon you have to keep alive, and why the death test answers twice on the same organism.
MATTER
02/07
start here
Algae and Cyanobacteria, from the molecule up
Phycocyanin, and the small group inside it that catches the light. The blue outlives the cell and the carbon does not, which is where most of the claims here go wrong.
Foundational · Molecular · Framework
The rest of the shelf
02
The blue that outlives the cell
Pull it out, dry the cell, it stays blue. So the life was never the point, and the whole design problem is heat and light on a shelf.
MOLECULAR · colour
03
What a living culture really fixes
RuBisCO turning CO2 into the first sugar. The honest figure comes out small once you count the energy it takes to keep the cells lit, warm and fed, and that arithmetic is the read.
MOLECULAR · lifecycle
04
Asking an AI model for a steadier blue
A generative model proposes a phycocyanin that holds its colour warmer. Stability is cheap to ask for and expensive to measure, so this one follows what was actually measured.
MOLECULAR · AI
Molecules Covered
phycocyanin
phycocyanobilin
RuBisCO
Glossary
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