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’ll make meals out of skinny air.
However that’s precisely how sure soil-dwelling micro organism work. In nature, they survive on a meager weight-reduction plan of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and water vapor drawn instantly from the ambiance.
Within the lab, they do the identical, consuming up waste carbon and reproducing so enthusiastically that their populations swell to fill large fermentation tanks. Siphoned off and dehydrated, that bacterial biomass turns into a protein-rich powder that’s chock-full of vitamins and basically infinitely renewable.
The last word purpose of those firms is to engineer a meals supply far decrease in emissions than standard farming. However as a way to try this, they’ll want to beat some very actual challenges. Learn the complete story.
—Claire L. Evans
This story is from the subsequent print concern of MIT Expertise Evaluation, which comes out on Wednesday and delves into the bizarre world of meals. If you happen to don’t already, subscribe to obtain a duplicate as soon as it lands.
The race to search out new supplies with AI wants extra information. Meta is giving large quantities away totally free.
What’s new: Meta is releasing a large information set and fashions, known as Open Supplies 2024, that might assist scientists use AI to find new supplies a lot quicker. OMat24 tackles one of many greatest bottlenecks within the discovery course of: information.
