Another original achievement of "from 0 to 1" in our country
Synthetic starch
Few people realize that we cannot do without starch from the moment we open our eyes: brushing our teeth, drinking milk, putting on clothes... As the most important ingredient of food, it is also an important industrial raw material. Starch is involved in almost every aspect of people's lives.
Can humans find a simple and economical way to obtain such important polymer carbohydrates?
As early as 6 years ago, Chinese scientists have produced several bold scientific ideas: if humans do not rely on farming, can they also obtain starch; if 0.031% of the carbon dioxide in the air can be "turned into" starch, humans still need to worry about global change. Is it warm? If human beings no longer rely on the sky for food, and the food is grown from land to factory production, will the food crisis still exist... If this series of "ifs" become reality, how will the world be changed by science?
These sci-fi ideas are now expected to become reality under the tireless exploration of scientists.
Not long ago, the research team of the Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (hereinafter referred to as the Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biology) made a major breakthrough in the artificial synthesis of starch, and for the first time realized the synthesis of carbon dioxide into starch in the laboratory.
On September 24, Beijing time, this paper was published online in the international academic journal "Science".
This is considered to be an original achievement of "from 0 to 1", breaking the bottleneck of the evolution of biochemical reactions, taking a big step towards designing life, and providing a new scientific basis for designing and assembling biological systems with new functions.
Synthetic starch-a typical original result from 0 to 1
The importance of starch seems to be self-evident. It is the most important nutrient in food, providing more than 80% of the world's calories, and it is also an important feed component and industrial raw material.
If nearly 2 billion tons of grains are produced, about 1.2 billion to 1.4 billion tons are starch.
Up to now, agricultural planting, which has lasted for more than 10,000 years, is still the only way to produce starch. Human beings have long been accustomed to this existing "creation" method.
"Natural creation" has its limitations: For hundreds of millions of years, plants have absorbed carbon dioxide. Under the complex regulation of temperature, light, growth cycle and other factors, it takes about 60 steps of metabolic reactions and transportation between cell components before they can finally pass the "photosynthetic". "Function" to realize the synthesis and accumulation of starch.
Taking crops such as corn as an example, under natural photosynthesis, the theoretical energy conversion efficiency is about 2%, and the solar energy utilization efficiency is too low.
But this is far from meeting the actual needs: traditional food production consumes 38% of the land, 70% of the freshwater resources, and a lot of fertilizers and pesticides.
my country, as the world's most populous country, has less than 10% of arable land and 6% of freshwater resources to feed nearly 20% of the world's population. Food security has always been a major challenge facing my country.
Scientists are already thinking: Can the paradigm of starch production be changed in the grain production process?
In 2018, the United States proposed a 100-year challenge plan to synthesize glucose (starch component) from carbon dioxide.
Designing an artificial biological system that does not rely on plants to synthesize starch is enough to become a major disruptive technology affecting the world, and the technological competition of "agricultural industrialization" has entered a new track.
Prior to this, Chinese scientists had already begun the layout.
In 2015, scientists from the Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biology formally launched an "offensive" on the country's major forward-looking and strategic scientific and technological problem from carbon dioxide to synthetic starch.
Focusing on the core task of artificial starch synthesis, the general research department of the institute has joined up with more than 10 research groups to form a "key team" to try to resolve the "scientific code" of carbon dioxide electro-hydrogen reduction.
After 6 years, Chinese scientists finally "rewritten" the photosynthesis process in natural evolution in the laboratory-the "carboxylation-reduction-rearrangement-polymerization" of the synthesis of plant starch and the complex process that requires transport between tissue cells to simplify For the "reduction-transformation-polymerization" process, the controllable synthesis of amylose and amylopectin is realized.
According to current technical parameters, under the condition of sufficient energy supply, theoretically 1 ton of fermenter can produce starch per year, which is equivalent to the average annual output of corn starch on 5 acres of land, which provides an alternative to agricultural planting for starch production workshops. Kind of possibility.
"This work is a typical original result from 0 to 1." Chen Jian, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, believes that this result will not only have a revolutionary impact on future agricultural production, especially food production, but also on the development of the global biomanufacturing industry. A landmark meaning.
"Starch Blue"-repeated confirmation after seeing it in a test tube for the first time
Cai Tao, the first author of this paper and an associate researcher at the Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biology, still clearly remembers a day, July 24, 2018, which is also the "birth day" of synthetic starch.
On that day, he was attending the meeting, and the phone received the photo from the staff.
There are 3 test tubes in the photo, two of which appear blue.
"What is this?" Cai Tao asked.
The other party replied: "This is the synthetic starch we want to make."
Although they have conducted hundreds of experiments before, Cai Tao and others have never seen artificially synthesized "starch blue".
Cai Tao immediately got up and returned to the laboratory to confirm with the staff every step and every detail of the environment, and to confirm whether it was a false positive result.
To ensure the accuracy of the experimental results, the team immediately designed repeated experiments.
By the next day, starch blue appeared in the test tube as expected.
Cai Tao said excitedly: "This time the blue color has been truly confirmed."
For this day, they waited for several spring and autumn.
After 6 years of grinding a sword, the "magic" of "carbon dioxide to starch" was realized for the first time in Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biology. step.
Behind this "indomitable" major scientific breakthrough is a group of outstanding young scientists with an average age of 36 years. At the beginning of the establishment, their average age was even less than 6 years old.
Since 2015, the Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences has begun scientific and technological research around the bio-transformation and utilization of synthetic starch and carbon dioxide.
This "cold bench" lasts for 6 years.
Cai Tao said frankly that there were moments in the middle when the task could not be carried out and he wanted to give up.
Compared with natural pathways that have evolved over billions of years, artificially designed pathways have a series of scientific problems such as poor compatibility between different catalytic reactions and enzymes.
He told reporters, "In order to achieve a breakthrough from '0 to 1', the record sheets in the laboratory are piled up close to the height of a desk."
For 6 years, a team has gathered closely to do one thing, one goal, and one task, vividly interpreting the "cell culture" that the institute has been advocating.
The entire scientific research project implements a "project-based" management mechanism, and each member is like a "cell component" with a clear division of labor and an organic unity to maximize the functions of cells.
"In the history of Chinese science, there has never been a shortage of challenging scientists, and there has never been a shortage of foresighted managers." Zhou Qi, vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, mentioned that the greatest significance of this breakthrough in scientific research is to allow us to fully realize "It is possible for people to create some biological reactions that did not exist in the past, but are more reasonable, which may change the life process, and may even change the industrial process. At the same time, it also makes us realize once again that the organized and institutionalized research mechanism and The combination of the spirit of scientists who dare to be the first, concentrate on research, and work together, will burst out how creative it is."
"Site"-Bridging the gulf of artificial biological evolution
The idea of "synthetic starch" has become a reality.
Nowadays, people are beginning to ask, why do scientists have to “change their fate” against photosynthesis?
If we say that agricultural planting was the only way to produce starch before that, people could only obtain grain starch by ploughing in spring and summer, harvesting in autumn and storing in winter; if we say that the cultivation method passed down for hundreds of millions of years has not changed the "no leisure in the world" Farmers still starve to death.” There are still more than 100 million people in the world who are severely hungry. Food security is still one of the major challenges in the future.
Then, the Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biology has realized the scientific achievement of full artificial synthesis of starch molecules for the first time, which will bring about major changes in agricultural production.
Akihiko Kondo, vice president and professor of Kobe University in Japan, and deputy director of the Sustainable Resources Science Center of the Japan Institute of Physics and Chemistry, said with emotion, “The synthesis from carbon dioxide to starch is undoubtedly our long-term dream without relying on photosynthesis. We can use synthetic starch to produce All kinds of materials and food."
In the laboratory, the synthesis rate of converting carbon dioxide into starch is 8.5 times the rate of corn synthesizing and accumulating starch under natural conditions, and the ability of artificial photosynthesis has been further expanded, "making the traditional agricultural planting mode of starch production, It is possible to transform to an industrial workshop production model, opening up a new technical route for the synthesis of complex molecules from carbon dioxide raw materials." Cai Tao said.
He told reporters that it can be boldly imagined that when the "carbon dioxide starch" technology is industrially used, the future starch production will adopt a model similar to "beer fermentation", and it is possible to achieve on-demand customized production in the workshop and change the traditional agricultural planting. ways to produce.
Once the industrial workshop for the production of starch from carbon dioxide is economically feasible, it may save more than 90% of arable land and fresh water resources.
"Synthesis of starch with carbon dioxide as a raw material is an amazing case of using synthetic biology to solve several major challenges in today's society." Professor Jens Nelson of Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, academician of the American Academy of Engineering, and foreign academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering praised this time. Major breakthroughs will pave the way for more related studies in the future, and the integration and application of these studies will help solve major challenges in the future.
"Top of the sky"-where there is electricity, there is food
"Situation"-synthetic starch will rewrite the history of hundreds of millions of years of humans relying on farming to obtain starch; "Dingtian"-carbon dioxide starch will alleviate the burden of global greenhouse gases.
Once, farmland was a "carbon source".
The production of agricultural materials such as chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and agricultural films will emit a large amount of carbon dioxide; the use of farming and agricultural machinery and agricultural irrigation will consume fossil fuels and continuously emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
In theory, if a 3-ton fermentation tank is equivalent to the starch yield of 1 hectare of land, it is equivalent to reducing 500 tons of carbon emissions.
Today, our country is fighting an ecological "hard battle", to reach its peak carbon emissions by 2030 and achieve "carbon neutrality" by 2060.
Cai Tao mentioned that if the electricity generated by renewable energy can be used to convert carbon dioxide molecules into methanol, formic acid, etc., not only can the renewable energy be converted and stored in the form of chemical energy, but it can also reduce the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and relieve Issues such as global warming and ocean acidification are an effective way to achieve both carbon recycling and renewable energy storage.
The scientific research team made a bold vision: in the future, the structure of the planting industry can be further optimized, the planting of crops with high resource consumption and large chemical inputs can be reduced, and the function of a single agricultural product supply will be transformed to the function of increasing carbon sinks and protecting the ecological environment.
"Using the electricity generated by renewable resources has achieved a leapfrog development from the reuse of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide to the synthesis of starch, the core component of food." Cai Tao said.
"When there is electricity, there is food", so it entered reality.
Zhao Guoping, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a researcher at the Center for Excellence in Molecular Plant Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said with emotion that this original achievement is a major breakthrough in the frontier research field of expanding and enhancing the ability of artificial photosynthesis, turning the traditional agricultural planting model of starch production into an industrial workshop production model. Transformation becomes possible.
At the same time, it also demonstrates the great potential of synthetic biology engineering scientific research strategy, and provides a successful example for the strategic orientation of basic research on the bottleneck scientific and technological issues in the realization of major application goals.
"This is a scientific research result of great significance for'indomitable'." Zhao Guoping said.
However, the scientific research team also stated that this result is still in the laboratory stage, and there is still a long way to go before practical applications.
Zhou Qi reminded to evaluate this scientific achievement objectively. He said, “Follow-up also needs to realize the breakthrough from the concept of '0 to 1'to the conversion from '1 to 10' and '10 to 100' as soon as possible, which will eventually become a solution to the problems faced by human development. Effective means and tools for major issues and needs."
China Youth Daily, China Youth Daily, trainee reporter Yang Jie, reporter Qiu Chenhui