What is nitrogen fixation by bacteria?
Learn more about the process of nitrogen fixation by bacteria.
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© Open University (A Britannica Publishing Partner)An overview of nitrogen fixation.
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Transcript
[MUSIC PLAYING] MELISSA PETRUZZELLO: Nitrogen fixation by bacteria is a process that I don't think gets enough attention. Our atmosphere is mostly nitrogen, but it's in a form that's unusable to most living things. And most living things need a lot of nitrogen because it's in all of our proteins and even in our DNA.
So how does the nitrogen get from the air into living things? For most of history, the answer to that has been bacteria. Nitrogen fixing bacteria live in the soil or in the roots of certain special plants like peas and beans.
And they take that nitrogen from the air and they fix it by adding hydrogens or oxygen into a form that plants can use, like ammonia. And the plants take it into their bodies, and from there it enters the rest of the food chain. So, thank you little guys.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
So how does the nitrogen get from the air into living things? For most of history, the answer to that has been bacteria. Nitrogen fixing bacteria live in the soil or in the roots of certain special plants like peas and beans.
And they take that nitrogen from the air and they fix it by adding hydrogens or oxygen into a form that plants can use, like ammonia. And the plants take it into their bodies, and from there it enters the rest of the food chain. So, thank you little guys.
[MUSIC PLAYING]