Betül Kaçar

So there are five elements that life relies on.

We don't quite know whether that's the only out of many options that life necessarily needs to operate on, but that's just how it happened on our own planet.

And there are many abiotic ways to fix nitrogen.

Like lightning, right?

Lightning can accumulate ammonia.

Humans found a way about 100 years ago, I think around World War I, the Haber-Bosch process that we can abiotically convert nitrogen into ammonia.

Actually, 50% of the nitrogen in our bodies comes from the human conversion of nitrogen to ammonia.

It's the fertilizer that we use, urea, comes from that process.

It's in our food.

So we found a way to fix our own nitrogen for ourselves.

Oh, absolutely.

Oh, absolutely.

We tried to replicate...

in the most simplest way, what nature has come up with.

Right?

We do this by taking nitrogen, using a lot of pressure and then generating ammonia.

Life does this in a more sophisticated way, relying on one single enzyme called nitrogenase.

It's the nitrogen that is used together with eight electron donor and ATP together with a lot of hydrogen.

Life pushes this metabolism down to create fixed nitrogen.

It's quite remarkable.