Biology 1002B Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Ribulose, Chloroplast, Glyceraldehyde
24 Aug 2013
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Document Summary
The global amount of carbon fixation is equivalent to 105 gigatons per year. Most of this value comes from terrestrial photoautotrophs, but a great quantity derives from the oceans. Phytoplankton are the major photosynthetic organisms in the ocean. Such oceanic organisms that fix carbon are typically found at the polar ice caps. They are known as ectotherms as their growth process is quite slow. Although nutrients are a limiting factor for development at the poles, there is an abundance of iron, in which the equatorial regions are lacking. Abundance of iron is what drives the greatest amount of phytoplankton. Southern ocean iron release experiment was an attempt to reduce the amount of co2 in the atmosphere by depositing iron in equatorial oceans to encourage phytoplankton activity. High levels of chlorophyll were recorded where the iron was dropped. Carbon fixation (the calvin cycle) is an endergonic process that occurs in the stroma of the chloroplast.
