Re:Singapore doubles down on lab-grown meat as Silicon Valle...
by padjo on Sunday June 23, 2024 @05:52PM
(#40770901)
It does seem like hubris to think we’re anywhere near being able to design a protein synthesis process that’s more efficient than a soy plant.
Re:Singapore doubles down on lab-grown meat as Silicon Valle...
by bitmasher9 on Sunday June 23, 2024 @06:17PM
(#40771075)
I don’t think so. A soy plant has tons of evolutionary baggage tied to its protein synthesis. It has to reproduce, out compete other life for resources, be hardy enough to survive both pests and pesticides, and it evolved in a resource constrained environment.
For life generating protein is a byproduct of other goals. It seems possible that we can do better.
Re:Singapore doubles down on lab-grown meat as Silicon Valle...
by Scarblac on Monday June 24, 2024 @10:16AM
(#40776335)
It's a bacterium in this case, not a fungus. It can metabolize hydrogen and use CO2 to build the proteins. They electrolyze water using solar power to create the hydrogen, so it sort of does happen on thin air, but of course some minerals need to be added as well. The product is basically a powder consisting of dried bacteria.
Maybe one day - the potential of fungi is amazing. It's a whole world that is fundamental to ecology and comparatively poorly understood or mapped. However, I remain skeptical at present once you factor in one or both of the lab costs (steel vats, process control, power consumption, thermal systems, and lab employees) and the raw inputs (fermentation doesn't happen on thin air).
By the time you've grown the raw input, why not just grow a food crop?
I feel virtue-signalling regulatory moves are meaningless. Case in point: many markets are totally unregulated, by your logic they're ahead of the curve. I don't disagree.