Solve food shortage? How about you produce food by yourself by...

**hellheaven1987** · September 30, 2012, 09:34 PM

Implant genetic-modified algae on your body so they can do photosynthesis for you?

This week deep sea biologist Chuck Fisher has a colourful idea to tackle world hunger.

“My idea is based on the animals I study but originally occurred to me as a graduate student many years ago studying corals.

I must admit that there are more than a few details that need to be worked out, so it is a dream for the future.

First of all a little background: the corals on a coral reef are actually a symbiotic combination of photosynthetic algae living inside of the coral animal and as a result, these animals only have a limited need to feed. They get most of their nutrition directly from sunlight, just like a green plant. So my idea is to implant tiny unicellular photosynthetic algae under the skin of humans.

Of course this would result in an even more wonderfully colourful human race than what we have now. But more importantly, these tiny symbiotes would create most of the food we need directly to humans and could help feed starving masses all over the world.

And since humans are warm-blooded, we could be growing our own food under our own skin even in winter, providing the sun was shining.”

Source

To point out, not just coral can achieve this but several cold-blood species, particularly several species of salamanders, also have unicellular algae live in their body for various purpose. So it is not an impossible idea to "enslave" algae and let them produce glucose for us.

**John I Tzimisces** · October 01, 2012, 12:14 AM

I am sure NOTHING could go terribly wrong with this plan.

**hellheaven1987** · October 01, 2012, 06:47 PM

Originally Posted by John I Tzimisces

I am sure NOTHING could go terribly wrong with this plan.

Don't worry, it is not like algae would become intelligent by co-existing with human.

On the other hand, it probably would be even easier to use "green" bacterias instead algae in this case; don't laugh, there are already researches under going to use genetic-modified bacterias as new disease fighters for some diseases - last article I have read is about using genetic-modified bacterias to fight Malaria protists. Now you start wonder how crazy biologists can go.

**Col. Tartleton** · October 01, 2012, 12:21 AM

**Condottiere 40K** · October 01, 2012, 09:27 PM

Allowing your kids to use a solarium won't be considered neglect anymore.

**Col. Tartleton** · October 05, 2012, 10:25 AM

Originally Posted by Condottiere 40K

Allowing your kids to use a solarium won't be considered neglect anymore.

Human greenhouses for everyone!

(I assume you actually meant tanning bed.)

**Phier** · October 05, 2012, 12:18 PM

Ummm no. It won't be able to supply the kind of energy a warm blooded animal needs.

**Lord Baal** · October 05, 2012, 01:28 PM

Great, solar powered zombies! They will be double green!

Al Gore will be really proud.

**Elfdude** · October 05, 2012, 02:05 PM

I highly doubt the energy produced by this would do much to curb human appetite and hunger. The amount of energy an animal needs is a magnitude of order higher than that a plant needs. It takes roughly ten pounds of plant energy to make one pound of animal energy and thats also digesting the things that make the energy. Further you require a massive amount more water to perform this feat than animal metabolism does and fresh water is already scarce in many areas.

Lets do some math:
The average human as about 1.8m^2 skin surface area although only really half of this is usable without using some sort of reflective system to direct light around the body, on a very sunny day the energy on the ground is about 400W/m2 of this about 2-6% of it is converted to usable energy.

400 J/s/m2 x (0.5 x 1.8m2) x 0.05 x 3600s = 64800J = 64.8kJ

Or about 15 calories after an hour of sun exposure.

So hypothetically if we managed to convert 20% of the sun's energy (a very impressive feat) we would produce about 60 calories in an hour and after 12 hours of sunlight exposure would have synthesized 720 Kcalories (or 720 food calories). This is standing in bright light all day long. The major concern here is of course skin cancer. Keep in mind to accelerate the process which requires 6 times more water than animal mitochondria x4 we're going to require 24 times more water.

Now this is also ignoring the need of the plant to absorb different raw materials from the ground and air around it.

Coral doesn't really move. Fungi doesn't really move (though even it produces much more energy than plants) salamanders/moluscs are considerably smaller requiring considerably less energy than a mammal etc. You can see how ineffective this would be.

What we would really need is a 15-30 foot tree growing out of our heads to even approach the necessary amount of sun exposure. Keep in mind, this is exposing ourselves to sun as often as possible meaning most of our lives would either be spent feeding on sunlight or doing activities which were compatible to remaining in the sun light.

Franky the knowledge and effort required to do this would be more effective used towards making our own metabolisms more efficient.

**Aanker** · October 13, 2012, 02:59 AM

Originally Posted by elfdude

What we would really need is a 15-30 foot tree growing out of our heads

Ants can do it, why can't we?

**The Hedge Knight** · October 05, 2012, 03:35 PM

How would these algae conduct gas exchange under your skin? Also how do I go about making my surface area to volume ratio large enough, plants are thin for a reason.

**I WUB PUGS** · October 05, 2012, 04:12 PM

This is stupid. We all know we must eat the poor to solve this problem.

**Nutsack** · October 05, 2012, 04:14 PM

I'm alright with this. I just want to see the guy who came up with the idea to do it first, on his dick.

**Col. Tartleton** · October 05, 2012, 10:54 PM

The best way to get rid of world hunger is to replace that lawn with a Victory Garden.

**Condottiere 40K** · October 12, 2012, 05:24 AM

Uploaded into the great server cloud in the sky as virtual beings in the forms of ones and noughts, then downloaded into android bodies as and when as needed and/or desired.

**Vanoi** · October 12, 2012, 06:18 AM

Food shortage? Doesn't the world produce enough food to feed 12 billion people? Not enough food isn't the problem. No access to food is.

**Holger Danske** · October 13, 2012, 04:47 AM

Force Americans to eat less food and force Africans to stop having so many children. Problem solved!

**SLN445** · October 13, 2012, 05:42 PM

Fix Africa and turn it into the food bowl it's ment to be.
Or as mentioned, replace lawns with veggie/fruit/crop gardens .

**Ishoss** · October 13, 2012, 06:32 PM

I know there is this Norwegian scientist who eats her own sweat as cheese. Her idea is to use our own bacterias for food. I don't think it's an entirely ridicolous idea, if we can do it on a large scale. Apparently, the sweat-cheese, according to cheese-testers, tasted very good!