Carbon Dioxide, a Waste Product of Metabolism (Climate-change): Essential for Origin, Development and Functioning of Life on Earth

Rising atmospheric CO2 has become politically and scientifically controversial. However, CO2 is essential for the origin and development of all life on earth and required for life to function. It has a central role in the global carbon cycle. Plants, algae, and bacteria use sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into glucose and oxygen as the basis for the ‘food chain’ and essential atmospheric oxygen is provided. To my knowledge, research from my laboratory was the first to show (using E. coli) that carbon dioxide deprivation was lethal. I address the complex roles of CO2 including: a brief historical perspective; the global carbon cycle; specific metabolic pathways of CO2, including Rubisco the most abundant enzyme on Earth; its essentiality for the origin and development of life; its vital role in human physiology; its toxicity; results from my laboratory, using a bacterium, that was the initial report that absence of CO2 was lethal; and (briefly) its role in climate change.