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Engineered yeast for converting plastic and biomass compounds to food additives

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Re: Engineered yeast for converting plastic and biomass compounds to food additives

#41

Post by Sha1rholder »

autoexec wrote: post #33

> The researchers took PET plastic, discarded corn plant stalks and leaves, and other biomass and put it through a proprietary process called oxidative hydrothermal dissolution. Created by SIU Carbondale Geology Professor Ken Anderson, this method uses water and oxygen at high temperatures and pressures to break down tough material into microbe-accessible pieces. Then, those pieces are fed to the programmed yeasts, w…

Vegetables grown in shit, garbage, and pesticides are fine as long as the levels of harmful residues are low enough by the time they reach people's mouths. Not appealing, but also not that "dystopian"

Re: Engineered yeast for converting plastic and biomass compounds to food additives

#43

Post by BigTTYGothGF »

hkt wrote: post #35
Loughla wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you define 'not absolutely required'?

Easy cases might be single use plastics outside of a medical environment and anything where there isn't a substitute with adequate properties (I'd ignore economics here and let the market solve) Ultimately a tricky thing to define though, no argument.

> let the market solve

That's how we got here in the first place.

Re: Engineered yeast for converting plastic and biomass compounds to food additives

#44

Post by londons_explore »

Someone needs to figure out how to convert mineral oil into food.

If it could be done, we solve world hunger overnight.

Oddly many countries explicitly have a law that such a thing is forbidden. I wonder it it was preemptively protecting farmers?

Re: Engineered yeast for converting plastic and biomass compounds to food additives

#45

Post by manyatoms »

londons_explore wrote: post #44

Someone needs to figure out how to convert mineral oil into food. If it could be done, we solve world hunger overnight. Oddly many countries explicitly have a law that such a thing is forbidden. I wonder it it was preemptively protecting farmers?

is there a lot of mineral oil out there? what motivates the suggestion of this particular precursor?

Re: Engineered yeast for converting plastic and biomass compounds to food additives

#46

Post by goryramsy »

londons_explore wrote: post #44

Someone needs to figure out how to convert mineral oil into food. If it could be done, we solve world hunger overnight. Oddly many countries explicitly have a law that such a thing is forbidden. I wonder it it was preemptively protecting farmers?

I couldn’t find anything about this in a cursory google search, do you have any more information or links on this?

Re: Engineered yeast for converting plastic and biomass compounds to food additives

#47

Post by bryanrasmussen »

shevy-java wrote: post #39
ch4s3 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually these bioengineered yeasts need pretty specific growth conditions in order to eat in this case ethylene glycol, not raw finished plastic. In this case they say "plastic-derived substrates" which means they're pre-processing the waste plastic.

> bioengineered yeasts need pretty specific growth conditions In a natural environment this will not hold. Organisms are unstable; they change all the time, simpler ones even more so. Mutants with a faster growth rate will, up to a certain maximum, take over from slower growing or growth-deficient mutants. There isn't really a compelling growth advantage for plastic-degrading organisms, which is one reason why plasti…

>In a natural environment this will not hold. Organisms are unstable; they change all the time, simpler ones even more so.

Jurassic narratives notwithstanding, unsure if this is a real problem. If you have a yeast that will only survive under narrow unnatural circumstances, I would expect freeing it into the wild with natural circumstances means it dies - not uses nature to find a way to destroy the world as a form of poetic justice for ever having been created.

Re: Engineered yeast for converting plastic and biomass compounds to food additives

#48

Post by bluebarbet »

hkt wrote: post #37
fc417fc802 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Burn it? With all the talk of carbon capture? Recall that plastic literally consists of a mass of hydrocarbons. Why not bury it?

I'd argue that if we are burning plastics we get to dodge microplastics, and we get a second use of hydrocarbons. Burn enough plastic, maybe we can displace some gas. Optimistic, I realise.

One problem is that plastic generally contains all manner of additives which create a health hazard when burned. Incinerators supposedly filter out the dangerous pollutants, but it seems likely that quite a lot gets into the air. For some of these chemicals we know that tiny concentrations, much smaller than previously thought, are enough to be dangerous. The safest approach IMO is ground sequestration. And of course much better regulation of plastic additives.

Re: Engineered yeast for converting plastic and biomass compounds to food additives

#49

Post by golem14 »

ch4s3 wrote: post #9
spockz wrote: post #4

Maybe the only thing more worrisome than microplastics everywhere is unstoppable plastics eating organisms everywhere, eating through all plastics everywhere.

Usually these bioengineered yeasts need pretty specific growth conditions in order to eat in this case ethylene glycol, not raw finished plastic. In this case they say "plastic-derived substrates" which means they're pre-processing the waste plastic.

>Usually these bioengineered yeasts need pretty specific growth conditions in order to eat

Until, say, they mutate independently. Now, I have no idea how likely that is, but I think the fear is not baseless. There's a fun SF book, "Directive 51", which explores this a bit. Not a bad book to cuddle up with.

Re: Engineered yeast for converting plastic and biomass compounds to food additives

#50

Post by ch4s3 »

golem14 wrote: post #49
ch4s3 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually these bioengineered yeasts need pretty specific growth conditions in order to eat in this case ethylene glycol, not raw finished plastic. In this case they say "plastic-derived substrates" which means they're pre-processing the waste plastic.

>Usually these bioengineered yeasts need pretty specific growth conditions in order to eat Until, say, they mutate independently. Now, I have no idea how likely that is, but I think the fear is not baseless. There's a fun SF book, "Directive 51", which explores this a bit. Not a bad book to cuddle up with.

Yeast drift a little but aren’t picking up new metabolic pathways very readily. Moreover these yeast don’t eat plastic they eat a component of PET in a bioreactor.
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