Can you tell us about the nitrogen cycle and its significance for the ecosystem?
Well, one of the key features for life to be possible on the planet would be the capacity
to take nitrogen and to fix it, to convert it into a form that organisms could use as
a source of nitrogen.
And the process of nitrogen fixation is a very elaborate biochemical process that is absolutely
critical for life to exist.
And so it's got to be one of the very first metabolic systems that would emerge.
And bacteria are playing a key role in nitrogen fixation.
What's interesting is many biologists believe that nitrogen fixation appeared also very early
in the history of life on Earth along with photosynthesis.
In fact, the metabolic pathways that drive photosynthesis actually conflict with the metabolic
processes that drive nitrogen fixation.
So those two processes have to be separated, and the way that bacteria separate them is
through what are called circadian rhythms, where during the night nitrogen fixation takes
place, during the day photosynthesis takes place.
And that elaborate regulation of those two processes, to me, defies an evolutionary explanation
and is something that I think, again, reflects a creator's handiwork.
Yes.