Algie 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 northern America but also
within Europe always we have a history
of earth movement which extended until
nowadays and this movement always needs
energy so I don’t know whether ever you
have thought about where this energy is
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 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 the
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
how what is this how was it possible
that we on the planet are able to use
the 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 build up oxygen and oxygen 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
could develop and the first
collaboration between green and long
green organisms start
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 the
small non green organisms kind of went
into an symbiosis with the green
organisms and used the carbohydrates or
the energy the stored energy which the
green organisms could store and used it
for energy energy consumption so from
this the first land plants developed
which means that more or less the car
plants 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 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 of the fungus in a
moist environment so it’s 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 house leak but what you can see is
a snail and the snail lives in the water
is 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 Verna’s 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 is the 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 deposited they are in and it
can make it viable so at one point the
snail starts eating at all it is green
and it doesn’t end 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 we are at what
what is the situation of the planet
we’ve heard about this today negative
news also I will be continuing this we
are champions in consuming discs and
solar energy could be food could be a
few world 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 we destroyed rather we destroyed the
environment by doing this so the future
scenarios you know all this 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 these for example one number just to
Alou in illustrate this until 2000 so at
the end of this of this century 2100 the
sea level could rise between half a
meter and two meters and this is because
we we produce so much oxygen co2 a
carbon dioxide the 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 am here to show a little bit the
possibility
we have with algae so algae are growing
ten times faster than any land land
plant they are inhabit inhabiting
extreme environments you can find them
in hot very hot areas but also in
glaciers and by living in these extreme
environments they have to protect
themselves against this the threat or
distress from the environment so they
made up very interesting and strategies
on how to survive in extreme
environments algae are producing 50
percent of the oxygen we are consuming
every day so imagine or 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 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
is the Gulf of the sky with these cloudy
areas in there with a lot of algae
destroying the fish there but in general
they are 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 whew and so the whole
ecosystem and the food web within there
is fueled by the Sun imagine the yearly
fish catches 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 990 million
fish 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 event getting more and more
important is omega-3 fatty acids so from
these 250,000 tons about three and Naha
3500 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 ups 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 fatty
acids 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’re 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 the
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
from an algae but also proteins and
fewer jet fuel in the end could be done
from algae because millions and millions
of years ago they were the basis of our
current of our car and 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
as you 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
greener more lively and more better for
life and we need to generate oxygen
within our our cities so one very nice
idea are these recreational pavilions
which are fueled by algae and sunlight
so within there you have an it would
have an an elevated oxygen concentration
and people if there is 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
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 in the u.s. also in
the Europe in Russia where they tried to
mimic what how is it possible to add I
have autonomic life in artists 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 oxygen so in general if
you calculate it would be enough to have
about 40 liter of an algae suspension to
make one human being to keep up the
oxygen supply 40 liters is not much
imagine it’s fat for buckets so you go
with your 4 buckets you exhale into the
bottom on the top you get the oxygen you
need you’re fine by at the same time 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 no
more oxygen but if you 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 three to
two three trees we would need if this
tree dies you need 15 years no breathing
until the die recruit adept tree
regrowth now here with the algae 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 plant started the
crops had like a few grains on a grass
that it wasn’t more into
years it took us to come up with these
land plans and the crops we have
nowadays we don’t have time to wait for
suit 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 5000 times
imagine just fifty years so now we had
the next step LG 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 what I’m
convinced of is that the algae will be
the green revolution 2.0 thank you [Applause]