Betül Kaçar

Organism that one can study, well-established, sort of a pet, lab pet, that we use it a lot for cloning and for understanding basic functions of the cell, given that it's really well-studied.

We inject pretty much all the bacteria that we work with, with foreign DNA.

We also work with diazotrophs.

These are azotobacteria.

They're one of the prime nitrogen fixers, nitrogen fixing bacteria.

So nitrogen is a triple bond gas that's pretty abundant in the atmosphere.

But nitrogen itself cannot be directly utilized by cells given it is triple bond.

It needs to be converted to ammonia that is then used for the downstream cellular functions.

Yes, so nitrogen needs to be fixed before our cells can make use of it.

No offense to nitrogen either.

Well, it's actually a very important element.

It's one of the most abundant elements on our planet that is used by biology.

It's in ATP.

It's in chlorophyll that relies on nitrogen.

So it's a very important enzyme for a lot of cell functions.

So far we know there's only one nitrogen fixation pathway, as opposed to, say, carbon.

You can find up to seven or eight different carbon-based microbes invented to fix carbon.

That's not the case for nitrogen.

It's a singularity across geologic time.

We think it evolved around 2.7, maybe 2.