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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

#51

Post by philipkglass »

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?

The Soviet Union ran such a program:

https://www.nytimes.com/1973/11/10/archives/soviet-plant-to-...

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP91T01115R0001000...

The term to search for is "single cell protein."

There are newer approaches to making single cell protein from carbon dioxide and renewable energy instead of fossil oil, like Solein:

https://www.solein.com/

There are a few problems with turning oil into single cell protein:

- Microorganisms have small cells that reproduce quickly, which means a lot of nucleic acids in the dry mass, which is trouble for animals (including humans) that can't tolerate a very high purine level in the diet.

- The abundant cell walls of microorganisms also can cause illness when they're a high proportion of dietary intake.

- Feeding single cell protein directly to people has to overcome traditions of cuisine, even in cases where it doesn't actually make people sick. Indirect usage of SCP (e.g. feeding it to salmon, and then having people eat salmon) can overcome that hurdle, but then the cost per human-edible calorie goes up too.

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

#52

Post by ch4s3 »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #47
shevy-java wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 o…

People who have never worked with anything biology related love to spout off about Jurassic Park. As a brewer I can assure you all that fancy special purpose yeasts just don’t turn into other stuff readily and often lose their modifications when they interact with wild yeasts.

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

#53

Post by mrguyorama »

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?

This is a bit nonsensical. How is doing chemistry to mineral oil to turn it into some other hydrocarbon sludge with mediocre nutrition more effective than the stupid hydrocarbon sludge we already have: Corn syrup?

Again, the ONLY reason there is still anyone, anywhere, who suffers from not enough food, is because people in the richest country on earth aren't even willing to spend a few million sending support to extremely needy countries.

Instead, we take a huge fraction of our entire corn crop, turn it into ethanol, and burn it. The primary reason we do it is to waste corn, so that corn prices are higher. We purposely make food more expensive, as a kickback to some real assholes.

World hunger could have been solved a century ago. No technology is required. Zero. At least until we have to figure out a reasonable way to make fertilizers more sustainable.

You know petroleum is actually expensive for a commodity, right? For the price of one barrel of oil, you could get an entire ton of iron ore, 0.8 tons of coal, 20 bushels of corn (about 1000-1200 pounds), 500 pounds of milk, 500 pounds of refined sugar, etc. Petroleum is an input to agriculture, but it enables staggering yield outputs per gallon of input. No amount of chemistry can ever compete with that for simple thermodynamics reasons.

Mechanized agriculture is so efficient that if you leave it to it's own devices it simply bankrupts itself every other year from oversupply. Damn near every functioning country artificially increases the price of basic agricultural commodities to ensure farms are stable. It's a massive handout to a cohort of people that nowadays are basically just very wealthy capital owners, but it also was the actual solution to famine, at least inside those countries.

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

#55

Post by SoftTalker »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #15
spockz wrote: post #4

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

Perhaps soon you'll be needing to apply stains or sealants to your outdoor plastic items. Maybe even purchase treated plastic products that we worry leach toxic chemicals into their surroundings.

You already do if they sit in the sun. The UV light breaks down plastic pretty quickly.

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

#56

Post by SoftTalker »

patwolf wrote: post #34
weaksauce wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there was a time in history before fungus came along and ate trees so there were just a huge amount of trees around that couldn't decay. (which is why we have coal actually) this could be something akin to that.

I've heard that the prevailing theory now is that it wasn't the lack of fungus that made coal. Instead, the earth was covered in tropical wetlands, and trees couldn't decay in the anoxic water.

No termites either.

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

#57

Post by SoftTalker »

mrguyorama wrote: post #53
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?

This is a bit nonsensical. How is doing chemistry to mineral oil to turn it into some other hydrocarbon sludge with mediocre nutrition more effective than the stupid hydrocarbon sludge we already have: Corn syrup? Again, the ONLY reason there is still anyone, anywhere, who suffers from not enough food, is because people in the richest country on earth aren't even willing to spend a few million sending support to extr…

The rich countries already send enough food to the poorer countries. The problem is their despotic and corrupt governments don't distribute it to the people who need it.

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

#59

Post by bryanrasmussen »

ch4s3 wrote: post #52
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 o…

People who have never worked with anything biology related love to spout off about Jurassic Park. As a brewer I can assure you all that fancy special purpose yeasts just don’t turn into other stuff readily and often lose their modifications when they interact with wild yeasts.

Are you perhaps misreading what I wrote, or am I misreading what you wrote? My reading of what you wrote makes me think you are interpreting me as claiming special purpose yeasts turn into other stuff readily, etc. etc.

on edit: my confusion stems from being the first to reference anything Jurassic in the conversation, so you sound somewhat accusatory.

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