In the overview it is stated that RNA folding plays a role in climate change. What are these roles?
", "messages": [ { "id": "2492098", "postDate": "10/22/2023 09:12:45", "content": "In the overview it is stated that RNA folding plays a role in climate change. What are these roles?
", "rawMarkdown": "In the overview it is stated that RNA folding plays a role in climate change. What are these roles?", "votes": null }, { "id": "2500422", "postDate": "10/26/2023 16:47:11", "content": "The overview references \"biological approaches to grand problems like climate change\". There's a lot of focus on technological approaches to combating climate change, but there are biological approaches that seem potentially impactful too. For example, you can perform atmospheric CO2 removal and sequestration with machines, but the same role has been played by plants for millennia.
\nWith a better understanding of RNA folding and structure, we can design molecular machines that could be impactful in climate change efforts. For example, designed RNA machines could be used in low-energy computing to reduce energy needs or as environmental sensors sensitive to biological markers of climate stress.
", "rawMarkdown": "The overview references \"biological approaches to grand problems like climate change\". There's a lot of focus on technological approaches to combating climate change, but there are [biological approaches](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982209012512) that seem potentially impactful too. For example, you can perform atmospheric CO2 removal and sequestration with machines, but the same role has been played by [plants](https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/soil-based-carbon-sequestration) for millennia. \n\nWith a better understanding of RNA folding and structure, we can design molecular machines that could be impactful in climate change efforts. For example, designed RNA machines could be used in low-energy computing to reduce energy needs or as environmental sensors sensitive to biological markers of climate stress.", "votes": null }, { "id": "2500932", "postDate": "10/27/2023 05:42:17", "content": "Had been thinking about this post and interesting your reminder on biological approaches, not just plants but bacteria (perhaps considered with plants in taxonomy?).
\ne.g.
\na project where carbon emissions from Tata Steel blast furnaces in Port Talbot are converted to acetic acid (which is used to make chemicals for different industries) by bacteria from sewage plant samples. The process could be used by many different industries looking to make production cleaner.
a project in France with bacteria with the ability for bioluminescence held in tubes that are used for lighting at events, street lighting, recovery rooms, etc., without oxygen(air) they go back to anaerobic and don't glow.
\nGuess anything that advances understanding of these processes and how to harness them or improve them even in small scale projects will play an important role for the future.
", "rawMarkdown": "Had been thinking about this post and interesting your reminder on biological approaches, not just plants but bacteria (perhaps considered with plants in taxonomy?).\ne.g. \na project where carbon emissions from Tata Steel blast furnaces in Port Talbot are converted to acetic acid (which is used to make chemicals for different industries) by bacteria from sewage plant samples. The process could be used by many different industries looking to make production cleaner.\n\na project in France with bacteria with the ability for bioluminescence held in tubes that are used for lighting at events, street lighting, recovery rooms, etc., without oxygen(air) they go back to anaerobic and don't glow. \n\nGuess anything that advances understanding of these processes and how to harness them or improve them even in small scale projects will play an important role for the future.", "votes": null }, { "id": "2502997", "postDate": "10/28/2023 16:26:12", "content": "In addition to plants, about 40% of global carbon fixation (!) is by marine organisms about which we know very little -- single-celled creatures like coccolithophores, diatoms, and dinoflagellates.
\nAI structure prediction methods like AlphaFold2 are accelerating our understanding of the proteins used by these mysterious organisms. But actually the majority of these organisms' genomes seem to encode for RNA's and not proteins. And we don't know what much of the RNA is doing, in part due to lack of good AI structural approaches.
\nYour models, if successful on the test set, would allow the RNA scientific community to start probing the potential structures and shared functions of this vast repository of sequences from the most important carbon-fixing entities on Earth.
\nWhile there are no guarantees that such basic knowledge would lead to biological approaches to climate stress, it's difficult to even begin thinking about such approaches without an understanding of the organisms involved!
", "rawMarkdown": "In addition to plants, about 40% of global carbon fixation (!) is by marine organisms about which we know very little -- single-celled creatures like coccolithophores, diatoms, and dinoflagellates. \n\nAI structure prediction methods like AlphaFold2 are accelerating our understanding of the proteins used by these mysterious organisms. But actually the majority of these organisms' genomes seem to encode for RNA's and not proteins. And we don't know what much of the RNA is doing, in part due to lack of good AI structural approaches. \n\nYour models, if successful on the test set, would allow the RNA scientific community to start probing the potential structures and shared functions of this vast repository of sequences from the most important carbon-fixing entities on Earth. \n\nWhile there are no guarantees that such basic knowledge would lead to biological approaches to climate stress, it's difficult to even begin thinking about such approaches without an understanding of the organisms involved!", "votes": null } ], "comments": [ { "id": 2500422, "author_name": "brainbowrna", "author_url": "", "post_date": "10/26/2023 16:47:11", "content": "The overview references \"biological approaches to grand problems like climate change\". There's a lot of focus on technological approaches to combating climate change, but there are biological approaches that seem potentially impactful too. For example, you can perform atmospheric CO2 removal and sequestration with machines, but the same role has been played by plants for millennia.
\nWith a better understanding of RNA folding and structure, we can design molecular machines that could be impactful in climate change efforts. For example, designed RNA machines could be used in low-energy computing to reduce energy needs or as environmental sensors sensitive to biological markers of climate stress.
", "votes": null, "replies": [ { "id": 2500932, "author_name": "something4kag", "author_url": "", "post_date": "10/27/2023 05:42:17", "content": "Had been thinking about this post and interesting your reminder on biological approaches, not just plants but bacteria (perhaps considered with plants in taxonomy?).
\ne.g.
\na project where carbon emissions from Tata Steel blast furnaces in Port Talbot are converted to acetic acid (which is used to make chemicals for different industries) by bacteria from sewage plant samples. The process could be used by many different industries looking to make production cleaner.
a project in France with bacteria with the ability for bioluminescence held in tubes that are used for lighting at events, street lighting, recovery rooms, etc., without oxygen(air) they go back to anaerobic and don't glow.
\nGuess anything that advances understanding of these processes and how to harness them or improve them even in small scale projects will play an important role for the future.
", "votes": null, "replies": [] }, { "id": 2502997, "author_name": "rhijudas", "author_url": "", "post_date": "10/28/2023 16:26:12", "content": "In addition to plants, about 40% of global carbon fixation (!) is by marine organisms about which we know very little -- single-celled creatures like coccolithophores, diatoms, and dinoflagellates.
\nAI structure prediction methods like AlphaFold2 are accelerating our understanding of the proteins used by these mysterious organisms. But actually the majority of these organisms' genomes seem to encode for RNA's and not proteins. And we don't know what much of the RNA is doing, in part due to lack of good AI structural approaches.
\nYour models, if successful on the test set, would allow the RNA scientific community to start probing the potential structures and shared functions of this vast repository of sequences from the most important carbon-fixing entities on Earth.
\nWhile there are no guarantees that such basic knowledge would lead to biological approaches to climate stress, it's difficult to even begin thinking about such approaches without an understanding of the organisms involved!
", "votes": null, "replies": [] } ] } ], "raw_markdown_by_id": { "2492098": "In the overview it is stated that RNA folding plays a role in climate change. What are these roles?", "2500422": "The overview references \"biological approaches to grand problems like climate change\". There's a lot of focus on technological approaches to combating climate change, but there are [biological approaches](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982209012512) that seem potentially impactful too. For example, you can perform atmospheric CO2 removal and sequestration with machines, but the same role has been played by [plants](https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/soil-based-carbon-sequestration) for millennia. \n\nWith a better understanding of RNA folding and structure, we can design molecular machines that could be impactful in climate change efforts. For example, designed RNA machines could be used in low-energy computing to reduce energy needs or as environmental sensors sensitive to biological markers of climate stress.", "2500932": "Had been thinking about this post and interesting your reminder on biological approaches, not just plants but bacteria (perhaps considered with plants in taxonomy?).\ne.g. \na project where carbon emissions from Tata Steel blast furnaces in Port Talbot are converted to acetic acid (which is used to make chemicals for different industries) by bacteria from sewage plant samples. The process could be used by many different industries looking to make production cleaner.\n\na project in France with bacteria with the ability for bioluminescence held in tubes that are used for lighting at events, street lighting, recovery rooms, etc., without oxygen(air) they go back to anaerobic and don't glow. \n\nGuess anything that advances understanding of these processes and how to harness them or improve them even in small scale projects will play an important role for the future.", "2502997": "In addition to plants, about 40% of global carbon fixation (!) is by marine organisms about which we know very little -- single-celled creatures like coccolithophores, diatoms, and dinoflagellates. \n\nAI structure prediction methods like AlphaFold2 are accelerating our understanding of the proteins used by these mysterious organisms. But actually the majority of these organisms' genomes seem to encode for RNA's and not proteins. And we don't know what much of the RNA is doing, in part due to lack of good AI structural approaches. \n\nYour models, if successful on the test set, would allow the RNA scientific community to start probing the potential structures and shared functions of this vast repository of sequences from the most important carbon-fixing entities on Earth. \n\nWhile there are no guarantees that such basic knowledge would lead to biological approaches to climate stress, it's difficult to even begin thinking about such approaches without an understanding of the organisms involved!" }, "source": "meta" }