61–70 of 107 posts
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?
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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.
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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.
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.
Is there any of this ”bacteria converting plastic to fuel/food/neutral stuff“ actually applied anywhere at scale under economically reasonably conditions?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
So called “rich countries” don’t even have food self-sufficiency. The only countries near that goal today are China, Vietnam, Brazil a close second.
> 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…
PET consists of repeating C10H8O4 monomers. Glucose is C6H12O6 and starch is a natural polymer containing it. It's not surprising that reactions can turn one into the other, along with other compounds containing hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen.