In last year's Maize Newsletter (71:85-86, 1997) I had an item on the O2 - CO2 cycle in relation to trait technology, to which I now want to add my drawing with a descriptive caption that completes the story of plant - animal symbiosis (Fig. 2).
Figure
2. Plant - animal symbiosis. Complementation between the hemoglobin
of animals and the chlorophyll of plants allows symbiotic survival of both,
as the O2 waste of plant photosynthesis is essential to animal
respiration and growth while the animal wastes of CO2, NH3
and CH4 are important to plants. Because animals lack chlorophyll,
they must obtain all of their food, directly or indirectly, from plants.
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