As we celebrate the 155th anniversary of the periodic table this March, we mark the milestone during British Science Week 2024 by shedding light on the chemical building blocks of an amazing sea creature.
The light generated by Diamond Light Source is one of the most powerful in the world, able to detail almost all the elements on the periodic table at a molecular level. And a recent discovery about tiny organisms means big news for biogeochemists.
The ability to see the elemental composition of microorganisms is only possible with the brilliant X-ray light available at synchrotrons like Diamond. When the elements were classified 155 years ago, with creation of the periodic table, it would have been impossible to imagine today’s groundbreaking technology. Being able to pinpoint the location of almost any element means scientists can discover things like the miniscule stripes of calcium and strontium on a sea-dwelling organism.
And why is this level of detail important? By working at this atomic scale, learning how even the tiniest creature are formed, scientists can translate this knowledge to bigger things, like better medicines, cures for viruses, and advanced engineering possibilities.
In a paper from the Environmental Science: Processes and Impacts of the Royal Society of Chemistry, users from Diamond Light Source, University of Sheffield and the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA) at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona studied marine algae on our I14 beamline. This study was part of a year in industry student project.
With the high-resolution X-ray techniques, the scientists have learnt some interesting details about coccolithophores, which is a type of marine plankton.
These organisms create their own outer shells called coccoliths, which are made up of calcium carbonate (the same material as chalk) as well as some other minor elements like strontium. The researchers created a high-resolution 3D image of the surprisingly stripy chemical makeup of these structures leading to new findings about how they are formed.
This single-celled algae can be found in the sunlight zone of the ocean. They use chlorophyll to capture the sunlight and use photosynthesis to turn it into energy. This means they consume carbon dioxide and release oxygen.
Coccolithophores are ecologically important and hugely contribute to the marine biological pump, the mechanism that takes carbon away from the atmosphere and the land, transporting it to the ocean interior and seafloor sediments.
Read more on Diamond website
Image : False colour scanning electron micrographs of different coccolithophore species