Just Vegging Out

There’s more than one pathway for carbon-fixation.  C3 is the old-fashioned way;  about 95 percent of all the plants in the world do it. But C4, which didn’t really start catching on until 6 or 7 million years ago, lets plants grow bigger with less water. The C4 Rice Project wants to convince rice to switch over, so we’d have more food. But as long as we’re fiddling with genetics, why not convert the human species to C4? Then we would all be a pleasant green color and spend our days lying in puddles with our faces to the sun.