Spirulina is the immortal descendent of the first photosynthetic lifeform. Beginning 3.5 billion years ago, blue-green algae created our oxygen atmosphere so other life could evolve. Since then, algae have helped regulate our planet's biosphere.

Algae are two-thirds of the Earth's biomass. Thousands of algal species covering the Earth are now being identified for food, pharmaceuticals, biochemicals and fertilizers. Algae represent one of the solutions we need to produce food while restoring our planet.

• In the Beginning... were blue-green algae.
• Thousands of algal species cover the Earth.
• Algae through human history.
• Rediscovery of human use-Kanembu and Aztecs.
• Spirulina lakes and pink flamingos.
• A new era of ecological agriculture.
  

When life began on Earth, the carbon dioxide level in our atmosphere was probably 100 times greater than it is today. Life began in a greenhouse atmosphere, and microalgae played the central role in transforming this inhospitable planet into the beauty and richness that makes up life today. How this occurred is particularly relevant in view of our concern with global warming.

Scientists believe the Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago, and the first lifeforms appeared 3.6 billion years ago. There is considerable controversy about how life was actually created on this planet.

One theory, growing in support over the past decade, asserts the Earth is a self-regulating, living organism, actively maintained by lifeforms on its surface. In The Ages of Gaia, James Lovelock offers an intriguing description of how lifeforms on the planet's surface modified and regulated the atmospheric gas composition as life evolved. Because the young sun was 25% cooler at the beginning of life, the greenhouse effect kept a cooler planet warmer. Earth's nitrogen atmosphere, without any oxygen, was rich in greenhouse gases (like carbon dioxide and methane) absorbing and trapping radiant heat, with the infrared radiation rising from the surface. The oceans were filled with iron, sulfur and other compounds in solution because there was no free oxygen. These substances reacted with and removed oxygen, so the Earth had a great capacity to prevent the appearance of free oxygen.1

The first living bacteria, the procaryotes, consumed chemical nutrients as food, but some adapted the energy of the sun to make their own food. The first photosynthesizing procaryotes, called cyanobacteria or blue-green algae, used light energy to break apart the abundant carbon dioxide and water molecules into carbon food compounds, releasing free oxygen.

Fossils dating back 3.6 billion years, show filaments of these single cells stacked end on end. The shape unmistakably resembles spirulina.

1.2. Drawing of a 3.6 billion year old cyanobacteria fossil.

Views of spirulina
under the microscope

1.3. Long filaments.

1.4. Perfect spiral coils.

1.5. Electron microscope.

Iron and sulfur compounds in the oceans mopped up almost all of the free oxygen immediately. Methanogen bacteria consumed decomposed algae and converted the carbon in it to methane gas and carbon dioxide, compensating for the removal of carbon dioxide by photosynthesizing algae.

Lovelock describes the planet during this period as a brownish red hazy planet, with a layer of methane smog in the atmosphere, offering similar protection as the ozone layer today. The cyanobacteria colonized the oceans and formed a thin film on the land masses.2 These blue-green algae carried their genetic information in DNA strands in the cell membrane and could exchange information by exchanging plasmids with another. In this way, the organism became essentially immortal.

"The Earth's operating system was populated totally by bacteria. It was a long period when the living constituents of Gaia could be truly considered a single tissue. Bacteria can readily exchange information, as messages encoded on low molecular weight chains of nucleic acids called plasmids. All life on Earth was then linked by a slow but precise communication network."3

Over a billion years passed. When the oxygen absorbing compounds in the oceans were used up, the atmospheric concentration of oxygen increased rapidly. Methanogen bacteria retreated into the only environments devoid of oxygen- beneath the sea floor, in marshes, and in the guts of other organisms.

About 2.3 billion years ago, a new period began when oxygen may have reached a 1% level, and methane, a greenhouse gas, disappeared from the atmosphere, cooling the planet.4

1.6. Chlorella, green microalgae with nucleus and strong cell walls.

Cells with nuclei appeared. This more powerful and complicated lifeform was supported by the higher oxygen concentration. These eukaryotes, such as microscopic green algae, may have formed from communities of individual bacteria living within an outer membrane of one of them. The nucleus contained organelles such as chloroplasts, the green bodies which photosynthesize. Because each organelle carried different genetic codes, the loss of information of one of them could mean the death of the cell. To overcome this possibility of death, sex evolved as a way to transfer information between cells.5

About 600 million years ago, Earth entered the present phase with the evolution of large plants and animals. The power requirements of larger organisms like trees and dinosaurs needed a higher oxygen concentration, which increased and remained steady at 21%. For hundreds of millions of years, the Earth's biosystem has kept the oxygen level carefully balanced between 15%, where higher life forms cannot survive, and 25%, where forests would spontaneously combust in a global fire.

The procaryotes, cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, still cover the land and water surfaces, part of the living mechanism for regulating the planet's biosphere. Our rediscovery and interest in this original lifeform is no accident. It represents our need to return to the origins of life to understand and heal our planet. Realizing that algae took billions of years to build and maintain the atmosphere, it is remarkable that humanity has raised the carbon dioxide concentration over 25% in merely one hundred years.

How important is the contribution this original lifeform? Brian Swimme, in The Universe is a Green Dragon writes:

"I think we should take the procaryote as the mascot of the emerging era of the Earth. What better organism to symbolize the vast mystery of the Earth's embryogenesis... Let's just hope we can emulate some of the achievements of the procaryotes... To begin with, it would be wonderful if we could contribute something as essential to Earth's life as oxygen."6

There may be more than 25,000 species of algae, living everywhere. They range in size from a single cell to giant kelp over 150 feet long. Most algae live off sunlight through photosynthesis, but some live off organic matter like bacteria.

Larger algae, like seaweeds, are macroalgae. They already have an important economic role. About 70 species are used for food, food additives, animal feed, fertilizers and biochemicals.

Microalgae can only be seen under a microscope. Some serve a vital role for breaking down sewage, improving soil structure and fertility and generating methane and fuels for energy. Others are grown for animal and aquaculture feeds, human foods, biochemicals and pharmaceuticals.

Microalgae in the ocean, called phytoplankton, are the base of the food chain and support all higher life. The rich upwelling of nutrients caused by the major currents meeting the continental shelf, or nutrients from river basins sustain phytoplankton growth.

There are blue-green microalgae like spirulina and aphanizomenon, green algae like chlorella and scenedesmus, red algae like dunaliella, and also brown, purple, pink, yellow and black microalgae. They are everywhere - in water, in soils, on rocks, on plants. Blue-green algae are the most primitive, and contain no nucleus or chloroplast. Their cell walls evolved before cellulose, and are composed of soft mucopolysaccharides. Blue-green algae do not sexually reproduce; they simply divide.

Some blue-green algae can fix atmospheric nitrogen into organic forms. This is very important because organic nitrogen is essential for building proteins and amino acid complexes in plants and animals. Although nitrogen gas comprises 78% of the atmosphere, it is not usable by most plants and animals. For more productive crops, nitrogen must be added to soils. Organic nitrogen can only come from adding chemical fertilizers, from existing microbial mineralization of organic matter, by nitrogen-fixing bacteria in legume roots, or by nitrogen-fixing blue-green algae.

Because of this ability to fix nitrogen, blue-green algae is often the first lifeform to colonize a desolate land area - in deserts, in volcanic rocks, on coral reefs, and even in polar regions, working with lichen to fix nitrogen to the rocks to begin life in the tundra.7

Nitrogen-fixing blue-green algae are being developed as natural biofertilizers, but they are not always safe to eat. Many kinds of microcystis, anabaena and aphanizomenon are toxic just like some mushrooms and land plants. Harvesting wild blue green algae from lakes presents a risk of contamination by algal toxins.

Spirulina, whose scientific name is arthrospira, is an edible, non-nitrogen fixing blue-green algae. with a long history of safe human consumption and over 30 years of safety testing. It meets all international food quality and safety standards. Specially designed farms where spirulina is cultivated under controlled conditions, do not allow the growth of other contaminant blue-green algae, as in lakes and waterways.

Microalgae have kept a rather low profile, but their interaction with humans is notable on several occasions. The Bible describes when the Israelites were starving in the wilderness, God provided 'manna' - a flake-like thing, lying on the ground. They gathered the manna and baked it into bread. Some believe the manna was a kind of lichen - a combination of fungus and blue-green algae that formed a crust on the rocks and ground.8

Another story took place a thousand years ago in Vietnam. A monk named Khong Minh Khong discovered rice was far more productive when a water fern, azolla, was planted in the paddies. The grateful farmers built temples to him after he died, but kept it secret.

Some 700 years later, a woman named Ba Heng rediscovered azolla. Growing rice with azolla continued for centuries, increasing yields and saving many people from starvation. Only this century did scientists discover blue-green algae living on the fern were fixing nitrogen as a natural biofertilizer for the rice.9

Although freshwater or inland algae has not been eaten nearly as much as larger marine seaweeds, a survey of historical literature revealed at least 25 separate cases where at least nine types of wild freshwater algae were collected and eaten in 15 countries.10 This non-seaweed algae has been used in a variety of soups, spreads and sauces and may have been an important source of vitamins and minerals.

When microscopic algae could be easily collected because it formed into larger colonies of mats or globules, it played a culinary and therapeutic role similar to many higher plants. So, eating algae may have been limited only by the difficulty of collecting these tiny organisms.11 Two cases, on separate continents, involved spirulina.

1. Lovelock, James. The Ages of Gaia. W.W. Norton&Co;., NY, 1988, p. 74.
2. Lovelock, p. 81.
3. Lovelock, p. 115.
4. Lovelock, p. 96.
5. Lovelock, p. 116.
6. Swimme, Brian. The Universe is a Green Dragon. Bear & Co., Santa Fe, NM, 1984, p. 137-8.
7. Kavaler, Lucy. Green Magic: Algae Rediscovered. Thomas Crowell, NY, 1983, p. 99-101.
8. Kavaler, p. 109-110.
9. Kavaler, p. 95-97.
10. Jassby, Alan. Spirulina: a model for microalgae as human food. Algae and Human Affairs. Cambridge University Press, 1988, p. 152.
11. Jassby, p. 153.
12. Ciferri, Orio. Spirulina, the Edible Organism. Microbio. Reviews, Dec. 1983, p. 572.
13. Ciferri, p. 578.
14. Switzer, Larry. Spirulina, The Whole Food Revolution. Bantam, NY, 1982, p. 12.