I was watching Planet Earth and they talked about Snotties. I’m wondering if they produce oxygen or carbon dioxide or some other gas? Thanks.
[Pedant]It’s snottites, not snotties.[/P]
You mean Snottites? LOL I got a bad vision before I opened this link.
Ah, ok. Can a passing mod change the thread title? Thanks.
According to the page you linked to, snottites are chemosynthetic, using sulfur. If they are sulfur-reducing chemautotrophs, like the deep-sea vent bacteria, then they produce sulfur compounds, not oxygen, and they consume carbon dioxide.
I was thinking of replacing my houseplants with used tissues.
I went and checked the Planet Earth episode, and it really sounds like Sigourney Weaver says “snotties,” and the closed-captioning thinks so as well. I blame Sigourney Weaver. There is no Zuul, only Snotties!
So, then, what happens to the oxygen molecule in the carbon dioxide? Does it get bound up with sulfur to create sulfuric acid?
Thanks for the responses.
It’s been years since I studied chemautrotophs, but as far as I recall they utilise carbon dioxide in the same way as green plants do, the only difference is that they use sulfur as the electron donor rather than oxygen. IOW while green plants produce O2 from the process the chemotrophs produce S2.
BTW, it appears from your question that you don’t realise that plants produce gaseous oxygen from the oxygen molecules on water, not from the oxygen molecules in the carbon dioxide. The oxygen in the CO2 becomes bound as part of the sugar molecule produced.
So the chemotrophs don’t need to do anything with the oxygen molecule in the carbon dioxide. They just need a way of regaining the lost electron. In green plants it’s stripped off hydrogen oxide to release oxygen, in these things it’s stripped off hydrogen sulfide to produce sulfur.
Yeah, I was unclear on the way oxygen was produced in plants. Thanks for the response.
Actually Blake is only partially right. One of the oxygens in the carbon dioxide gets bound up in the sugar, but each carbon only has one oxygen on it in a sugar. I’m not certain of the mechanism behind photosynthesis, but the other oxygen either becomes water or oxygen. The overall reaction of photosynthesis is this:
6CO2 + 6H2O —> C6H12O6 + 6O2
So there is not enough oxygen in the water to balance the O2. This is a simplified reaction though.
Anyway, from what I can tell, these snotites are not standard chemotrophes since they produce sulfuric acid not sulfur.
Do Scotties produce oxygen?
They’d certainly smell better if they did.
Did anyone else think we were going to get a learned discourse on snot formations in the nose and how to preserve them when excavating them?