Chinese scientists break through the technology of carbon dioxide synthetic starch
2021-09-25 09:18:35Source: Xi’an Evening News
Associate researcher Cai Tao shows a sample of synthetic starch in the laboratory (photographed on September 16). (Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Jin Liwang)
Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, September 24 (Reporter Dong Ruifeng and Wang Jinghuai) Using carbon dioxide as a raw material, it does not rely on plant photosynthesis, and directly artificially synthesizes starch-a scene that seems to be sci-fi and actually takes place in the laboratory. Chinese scientists have realized the de novo synthesis of carbon dioxide to starch for the first time, and the relevant results were published online by the internationally renowned academic journal “Science” on the 24th Beijing time.
Starch is the most important component of food, usually produced by crops by fixing carbon dioxide through natural photosynthesis. The synthesis and accumulation of starch in nature involves more than 60 biochemical reactions and complex physiological regulation. Synthetic starch is a major issue in the field of science and technology. Previously, scientists from many countries have actively explored, but have not made any substantial and important breakthroughs.
Ma Yanhe, a researcher at the Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, led the team to design and construct an 11-step reaction of unnatural carbon fixation and starch synthesis pathways from scratch using a method similar to “building blocks”, which was realized for the first time in the laboratory. From carbon dioxide to total synthesis of starch molecules. Nuclear magnetic resonance and other tests have found that the structural composition of synthetic starch molecules is consistent with that of natural starch molecules.
Preliminary laboratory tests show that the efficiency of synthetic starch is about 8.5 times that of traditional agricultural starch. Under the conditions of sufficient energy supply, and according to current technical parameters, theoretically, the annual starch output of a 1 cubic meter bioreactor is equivalent to the annual starch output of my country’s 5 acres of corn land.
Ma Yanhe introduced that this research designed and assembled an anabolic pathway that does not exist in nature, and made it work more efficiently than natural biological processes, spanning hundreds of millions of years of evolution from natural pathways. This breakthrough opened a window for the production of starch in the workshop and opened up a new technical route for the synthesis of complex molecules from carbon dioxide raw materials.
Internationally renowned experts such as Manfred Reitz, academician of the German Academy of Sciences, and Jens Nielsen, academician of the American Academy of Engineering, all spoke highly of this achievement, believing that this major breakthrough has taken the research in this field forward.
Zhou Qi, deputy dean of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that the results are still in the laboratory stage, and there is still a long way to go before practical applications. The follow-up needs to realize the transition from the concept of “0 to 1” to “1 to 10” as soon as possible.
It is understood that with the approval of the Ministry of Science and Technology, Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biology is taking the lead in building the National Synthetic Biotechnology Innovation Center. The next goal of the scientific research team is to continue to overcome the underlying scientific problems such as the design and control of the starch synthesis artificial biological system, and on the other hand to promote the results to industrial applications, so that the economic feasibility of artificial starch will be close to agricultural planting in the future.
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