A brand new crop of biotech startups, armed with carbon-guzzling micro organism and loads of capital, are promising one thing that appears too good to be true. They are saying they will make meals out of skinny air.
However that’s precisely how sure soil-dwelling micro organism work. In nature, they survive on a meager eating regimen of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and water vapor drawn straight from the ambiance.
Within the lab, they do the identical, consuming up waste carbon and reproducing so enthusiastically that their populations swell to fill huge fermentation tanks. Siphoned off and dehydrated, that bacterial biomass turns into a protein-rich powder that’s chock-full of vitamins and primarily infinitely renewable.
The final word objective of those corporations is to engineer a meals supply far decrease in emissions than standard farming. However in an effort to try this, they’ll want to beat some very actual challenges. Learn the total story.
—Claire L. Evans
This story is from the following print concern of MIT Expertise Evaluate, which comes out on Wednesday and delves into the strange world of meals. For those who don’t already, subscribe to obtain a replica as soon as it lands.
The race to search out new supplies with AI wants extra knowledge. Meta is giving huge quantities away totally free.
What’s new: Meta is releasing a large knowledge set and fashions, known as Open Supplies 2024, that would assist scientists use AI to find new supplies a lot quicker. OMat24 tackles one of many largest bottlenecks within the discovery course of: knowledge.
