Turning Plastic into Protein | Fork, Knife, Pipette
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- čas přidán 22. 07. 2024
- What if we could turn biomass and plastic into edible protein?? In collaboration with Merck KGaA Darmstadt, Germany, this episode is about a potential future technology that could turn everything from wood to grass clippings to plastic into something edible. This video is the first in a series about food, biology, and eating, all focused on the central idea of “What’s in Your Food?” called Fork, Knife, Pipette. #alwayscurious #humanprogress
Find out more about the Future Insight Prize here: www.emdgroup.com/en/research/...
Citations
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7. www.energy.gov/eere/articles/...
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Long time no see Alex! finally another vid..!
Hello hello! There are three more videos scheduled to go up between now and October, with a fourth one shortly after. I'm back!!
We dont have a lack of food. It's just a distribution/logistics problem. Also a good amount of that biomass has to go back into compost to keep nutrients in the soil for future plants
But at the same time, if we didn't ship food all around the globe that biomass could be returned to the soil after we've digested it.
With the example of the tomato plant I was thinking: The stems/leaves etc don't just go to waste, usually they'd get composted to later produce again fertile ground. What would be the impact on this if these things would get used differently? It probably also depends on how much could or could not be reused.
Thanks for creating this wonderful video that's both entertaining and educational! We appreciate it!
I'm so incredibly happy and flattered that you enjoyed it! Hope I did your work justice :)
I found your channel when I became curious about salps. I’m glad I did too. I’ve always been into science growing up and the break down of things. Exactly the things you do in your channel. It’s so much fun and you’re absolutely gorgeous. What’s not to love.
me too
That’s when the science is at it’s best. When it’s not used to exploit other beings, not used for warfare, not used just to make profits and destroy the planet but to actually help the planet and all of humanity… That’s how it should be. Awesome video!!!
Thank you! And yes, that's why I really liked this idea. It may not be the one single solution that solves all our problems, but it's a really intriguing way to think about solving them using science.
Lots of species depend on dead biomass for survival. That's one of the reasons why turning forests into plantations where the wood is harvested creates large-scale biodiversity loss. Technologies like this hand yet another piece of the cake to us that used to sustain other life. Two sides to every story, I assume. Making plastic edible, of course, sounds pretty good.
Oh totally, and the idea certainly wouldn't be to go out and use every bit of biomass for food. But imagine being able to turn some portion of the food waste that winds up in landfills, or some amount of recycled plastics, into something useful. I think it's super interesting research that could be one of the many solutions to tackling a big problem.
a) fascinating and hope-inspiring subject matter
b) So happy to see Alex back making videos on her CZcams Channel!!
Hopefully, we'll see more frequent postings from one of my favorite science CZcamsrs!
Yes yes yes!! More frequent is about to happen. Haha having a series that all link together is actually super motivating to getting videos out again.
This got me interested. But importantly, new vids are upcoming yay!
I always wonder about the energy efficiency of these processes. A big problem about recycling some material for example is, that it uses way more energy than just producing new materials and you end up using more ressources than you get out of it. Looking forward to the progress in food technology.
This is an excellent question. Most of this is pretty theoretical at this point, they're still working out the beginning stages, so it will be interesting to watch and see if this is more beneficial overall that just composting or discarding the biomass and plastic.
Great job, hope to see more from you.
I liked the video and your hair highlights. :D Oh - i read the hash tag as Always Scurious hehehe.
Yay, thank you! :)
I've been looking forward to seeing videos like these since we talked about them at thinkercon!
I'm so glad! These are just dipping a toe into the whole world of ideas around food science I've gathered, testing the waters to see if people like them. But I'm having so much fun with putting them together, I hope you like the other batch that are coming soon too!
Loved this! 💙
Thank you!
Ruminants do a fantastic job turning inedible biomass into edible food.
hello alex .....would you mind making a video on what you would recommend for people that are trying to get into graduate school for statistical genetics with only a bachelors degree in biology and no math/computer background and with only 2 years of wet lab experience ? I am having an extremely hard time finding the way to make this transition.....I sometimes feel like it's just not possible and too late - it's not like I am going to go back and get another bachelors. Any suggestions? Thanks
Omg your videos are so amazing
I get the point of all this and the whole this is amazingly awesome (i even had a senior in collage that was doing research on plastic eating bacteria, poor thing was struggling all the way through it but i admired her determination), anyways, maybe its me being bad at botonay but wouldn't you want to keep the plant bio mass you are not eating A-the plant uses pre existing bio mass for next season's growth(depends on the plant)
Or B-plant "sheds" this biomass to be reused next season for growth , otherwise we would be driving out nutrients from the soil (even more so than we already are) which will just lead to more fertilizer usage to replinish those soil nutrients.
Great video regardless as i am thinking about it from a "growing staple crop" standpoint bit if all we need is cellulose we can fold in fast growing "grasses" into the diet (can't really remember the clasification but there were plenty of "un-edible" plants we use for cellulose production"
I personally think hydroponics and controlled vertical farms is the way to solve our already existing/upcoming food crises
In the end: great video , please keep up the good work
WELCOME BAAAAACK!!!!
Thank you!!!!! More coming soon (for real this time!)
Imagine what this idea coupled with gene manipulation and insertion could do…! I loved this video, and I am here for it!
Right?! I think that this could be super powerful. I'm so glad you liked this vid, and there's more cool food science coming soon!
Such a cool idea!
Yeah! Learning to eat a little better, inspired by cows 😅
Great video 🥰I'm such a fan of GMO.
Oh well then just wait! There's a video coming in October all about GMOs!
I can't wait to see it!!
Loving the new content. But this got me thinking. Are we also able to capture the energy released as larger or longer bonds are broken down to smaller base units as well as the food production?
That's an awesome question. I actually think that part of the process is where we're going to need to look into what works best for each material. If there's an enzyme that can break apart the monomers, that would strike me as pretty low-energy intensive... just mix enzyme and polymer and keep at 25-37C. But if we need to use super high temps to break them down instead, the energy tradeoff really needs to be considered.
Planning for a virtual trip for grade 8 kids.... any suggestions from your videos... I was thinking about showing your lab, but there are so many.... let me know your idea
Fascinating, would nylonase bacteria be able to be used in this process?
Woah. I had not heard about nylonase bacteria, and just wrote a whole podcast script about nylon (which is *fascinating*) and now I feel like I need to merge these two ideas together.
I'm going against the crowd here but I don't think breaking down plastic is a good idea.
Firstly, plastic is really useful to us because it *doesn't* get broken down. We can store stuff for a very long time with a very cheap material. Yeah sometimes we use too much packaging, but for *most* plastic use there's not a good alternative.
Secondly, plastic in landfills is a carbon sink. 1kg of plastic in the ground is ~1kg less carbon in the air. Having bacteria break it down should possibly be considered carefully. Maybe food from plastic will save more in other carbon emissions from farming, or maybe its better off in the ground.
It's pretty cool though.
Also instead of just "considering carefully" I would like to see an efficient, well-audited global carbon credits market, and associate mandated carbon taxes. Then, we can judge the climate change impact of these things better.
imagine those plastic eating bacteria spread and we no longer able to store things in plastic bottles lol
This video was the perfect companion to my morning intake of carbs, proteins and the most important of all nutrients…. Caffeine ::):):):)
Food science is absolutely mad in all the right ways, and I can’t wait until the day where my recycling bin makes delicious waste for eating :):)
Good
Hi, Alex! Scientifically it's a very interesting technology, especially if it's going to solve the problem with plastic. But before increasing the production of a food we should learn how to efficiently use what we already have. US Department of agriculture estimates that from 30% up to 40% of the food become waste. It is lost at the retail and consumer levels and that's a huge deal and a real challenge for future optimization. One of the solutions, i think, might be to shift the priorities to on-demand production in the economy.
This is a very good point. I think that this, like most solutions, is not one-size-fits-all but rather part of a larger strategy. I chose tomato plants because they're a pretty easy example, but there are other places this could potentially be used outside of the current food-production pathways... say byproducts from paper milling, or landscaping waste, or plastic recycling. I think we need to make lots of changes to how we produce and distribute food, and this could be one puzzle piece but certainly isn't the one and only final solution.
Hi Andrey, as Alex noted, no single magic bullet will be a complete solution. The auto industry has benefited for years from on demand inventory control (just in time) but now is encountering supply chain short falls. We will need far greater interdisciplinary skills to deal with the world of tomorrow. Have a great day.
Alex, wait a minute! Maybe this bio-technology could help us recycle that food waste i mentioned above into something edible again? If that's the case, then surprisingly it's a good candidate to become a one-size-fits-all solution :)
@@corykathol1868, thanks for the reply! I generally agree with your concerns about the on-demand production. If this approach is used at every step of a long food supply chain, the risk of shortage is high. But if it is used only at the very end, the risk is manageable. Usually ingredients have much longer shelf life than the end product does. Let's take a bread as an example. Once baked, it will go bad in a week or so. In contrast, flour, sugar, salt and oil can be stored at least for a year. Besides, food produced on demand must be cheaper for the final customer, because he won't have to pay for that extra product that no one will buy. I myself is not a big fan of ordering food in advance, but if it helps save money and the environment then why not.
@@andreytimashov1123 Yes!! The Future Insight prize page has a little animation of someone taking the food waste from their home, putting it into a little machine, and getting out something they can eat! I don't know if it will be *quite* so modular for our own home food waste, but at the farm/distributor/grocery store level I could see it being a possibility!
Hi! Are you the alex dainis that I heard on the bad science podcast talking about big, angry crisper modified gorrilas? If so let me know so I can sub!!!
Haha yes, that was me!!! Welcome :)
Your videos make my nerd brain so happy :) (also - still binge your old grad school vids to help idiot proof my experiments XD )
This makes *me* so happy!! I'm glad to be back with more videos so stay tuned :) :)
In the USA, sure. But come to Western Australia and see how thousands of hectares of arid land can support cattle grazing but not crops.
Interestingly, this is one of the reasons why diets that rely heavily on vegetables but *aren't* vegan can theoretically support more people than vegan diets: they take advantage of grazing land for things like dairy and eggs.
Maybe instead of changing everything to be edible we can change humans to have goat digestive systems?
Haha, that might be a slightly larger technical challenge!
@@AlexDainisPhD But it was already done years ago! Science program "Saturday Night Live" showed a living Goat Boy in the 80's, I think.
hi
..my name is omi...i am from bangladesh..
🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰
Hi Alex, I’m a 11 years old student from Myanmar. We cannot go to school because of the virus and the military coup. But we are teaching online. Yesterday my teacher told me plant and write about the plant everyday.Can I get your advice for that please?
What kind of plant are you interested in writing about? Some easy plants to grow at home could be radishes!
@@AlexDainisPhD Thank you so much for your advice Alex ✨
I can already see the future newspapers headings: human engineered plastic digesting bacterium mutates to be airborne and antibiotics resistant, spreads across the entire planet and digest all of the plastics on earth 😁
Can't get back to using wood because none remains due to deforestation and frequent fires brought about by the climate change 😔
Hah, well I hope it won't digest all the plastics! But the ones we're done with and want to turn into something else? That would sure be nice!
We’d have to make sure they’re intelligent enough to understand that. Although that’s a philosophical question 😬
(Sentient bacteria, was probably done on Star Trek)
I would totally NOT eat proteins from plastic! But I might agree with other uses... I don't think all that chemicals are safe to eat. What if there's a toxic contaminant in the plastic? What then?
oh wow, just make fertilizer out of it genius....
soylent green is plastic