If I showed you these three products and asked you to name something that they all had in common, what would you say?

One of the most obvious things that you’d probably say is that each of these products is made directly from animals, or maybe that each of them is sold in stores, or maybe you’d get granular and say that these are all made of atoms. You would not be wrong.

But then, if I added some more products into here besides some milk, fur, and eggs, like textiles, makeup, boats, a plane, paper, etc., etc., it might get a little more difficult to determine something that makes all of these similar.

Now we have decorations, leather, meat, eggs, milk, fur, paper, seafood, makeup, skincare products, and more. What do all of these things have in common now? They are not all made from animals, they are not all used in the same way, and they are not necessarily connected to some action that relates them all, or puts them under a generalised category.

I guess you could say that they are objects, all made from atoms, or that they are nicely designed photos (thanks CAS! 😎), or that they are all manufactured products.

And you would not be wrong. Manufacturing was one of the important things that I was hinting at. Manufacturing is the system of production that humanity relies on to make its products and the systems that are used to build the foundations of modern civilization. Manufacturing is what allows us to travel, make new things, eat, drink water, use electricity, have houses, go on boats, write, and more. Manufacturing does a lot for us.

But what is at the heart of manufacturing that brings all the industries it creates together? If we look a bit deeper into the thing that makes food food, shoes shoes, clothing clothing, paper paper, and makeup makeup, we find that there is one commonality between all of these things. Protein. Protein is the foundation of manufacturing, which is the backbone of humanity.

What is protein?

The science of protein is pretty complex, but can easily be broken down. Literally. Protein is a structural nutrient that is synthesized by a bunch of organisms in the cell. A structure called the ribosome builds it from these amino acids (they are just organic compounds) and places them into chains held together by this force called a peptide. The chains of amino acids are polypeptides. One polypeptide or multiple fused polypeptides make a protein.

Then the protein is processed and packaged by the Golgi Apparatus and sent off to go do amazing things for our bodies. In-between the steps, some biochemical processes help to ensure the structural integrity of the protein, and so forth. Once we have the protein sent off, they help to build life. But why is protein so versatile?

Because of math. If we look at amino acids, there are 20 types (do not bother trying to memorise these or their names — unless you are taking AP Chem/Bio 😭, or you are a scientist).

Therefore, you might think that there are about 400 different proteins that we can make/are in the body. This time, unfortunately, you’d be wrong.

The human body contains about 80,000 to 400,000 different proteins. This is because of order. We can have these amino acids paired and placed in so many different orientations, and the number of permutations yields is much higher than the generally expected number.

And because there are so many different proteins, there are so many different functions. Not to mention how complex proteins are in their morphology (their structure and shape), which varies from protein to protein.

Look and their structure, we find that a protein has four main structures that inform its 3D shape!

1. We start with the primary structure. This is just the polypeptide chain.
2. Then, the hydrogen bonding of the polypeptide forms the new patterns of the pleated sheet and the alpha helix and constitutes a bunch of bonds that form the 2D structural coil and plate patterns. This is called the secondary structure.
3. After processing these together, the tertiary structure is formed, and we can start to observe this 3D polypeptide structure, and a very sprawled-out, spaghetti-like structure in protein imaging.
4. Then finally, we get the quaternary structure, or the 3D protein itself, fully formed and ready to be used to make products, give us nutrients, and do practically everything for us and our current manufacturing system.

And this entire process is informed by genetics.

Our genes code for the instructions telling organisms, like humans, to produce certain proteins in the body. For example, the kappa-casein gene in milk-making bovines is responsible for creating the protein casein, which is one of the most important proteins in milk.

But the reason why we are creating so many problems for ourselves as a human race is because of the protein supply chain.

The Protein Supply Chain Problem

The protein supply chain describes the conglomeration of the different industries reliant on protein, and the current production system used to make protein.

To be honest, the protein supply chain and current protein production are simple: it kills organisms and then siphons the protein circulating throughout their biological systems. Aside from killing animals, it has long been believed that there is no conceivable way to produce protein or no possible alternative that has the same effects and versatility as protein. Only one of those two assumptions is correct.

The sad thing is that what is behind our current manufacturing system and the protein supply chain — which mind you, is the primary infrastructure that has built up society for years, and allowed us to do everything — is 91.6% of all greenhouse gas emissions. That is right. Over 9/10ths of greenhouse gas and climate change are thanks to protein. One of the biggest things you may think of as an avid researcher, normal human being, or anything in between or outside the generalization of the types of people that read my articles, is probably about CO2, methane, and hydrogen. That is what comes to mind when I talk about greenhouse gas.

But what I’m currently referring to is this:

Our near-term consequences. This is what our life looks like right now. Not 50 years from now, not 100 years from now, but currently.

It is interesting how because glaciers are not melting, factories are not emitting smoke, and El Niños are not happening in our backyards every day, we start to detach ourselves from a really serious issue. A contemporary and immediate problem with no immediate solution. That is a recipe for disaster. What is interesting, though, is that the protein supply chain ought not to think of climate change as a problem, but rather as an outcome. You might have heard about this school of thinking before, but it is truly profound. Asking the “why” behind all of the outcomes we are seeing leads us to the most important revelation:

It is not that we are creating a protein that is the root cause of climate change. It is how we are creating a protein that is the problem. This is why I dare to say that the current protein supply chain stinks. It is revolutionary, indispensable, and pretty awesome, but it is not good. Current manufacturing is not good.

One of the mental models you can use is to think forward. Think about what we will look back on in 50 years, and say “wow, that was pretty dumb”, or think about the fact that we are creating a future for the 9–11+ billion people in 2050 that will be littered with acidic oceans and cloudy skies. Think about the fact that protein production is about 5% efficient, and takes up so much land, water, and food that just to feed the population of 2050 with current agricultural protein production, we would need about 7 planet earth…

If you do not believe me and you do not want to imagine, the proof is very-much-so in the pudding. Because of our current pandemic situation, manufacturing has drastically slowed down. For the first time in years, the notoriously cloudy Hollywood sign has become visible again in clear skies.

Such a glow-up 🤩

All because of under a year or less, not even none, but less manufacturing. But we do not want to stay in a pandemic, and it is not even the best overall course of action in slowing down and ultimately stopping the big bad that is global warming. So, that forces us to either 1.) create or find another nutrient or molecule that has the same promise and use that protein does, or 2.) create a new way to produce proteins.

The Solution

I can tell you already that one is probably either never going to happen, or not for another 1000000 years. But, 2 is possible, and it is currently happening right now, thanks to alternative protein companies.

These awesome companies each play a larger role in creating the future of the protein supply chain, specifically in food. And it all starts with a fungus. Yeast.

We begin by *inexpensively* getting a bunch of yeast. Quite a simple step if I do say so myself.

Then, we harmlessly prick out the gene from a cow or from the animal with the desired genes that produce a certain protein, and inject them into the yeast using a vector, which is a virus or a plasmid (circular DNA bundle) that communicates a new genetic code to other DNA containing structures, like chromosomes. You can think of it as a car salesman that drives a car around and gets a whole bunch of other car owners to buy cars. Through the process of transformation and recombination, the new genetic code is adapted throughout the yeast. Then, we cause the yeast to ferment.

Now, fermentation is a really important process that we need to talk about.

Fermentation

There are two main types of fermentation: lactic acid and alcoholic/ethanol (the yeast does alcoholic).

Fermentation begins with glycolysis, except when we make pyruvate this time, there is no extracellular matrix, Krebs Cycle, oxidation, or any of that jazz you may have learned vaguely about in 4th-grade science (and later on). Instead, it goes through a different pathway system which ultimately creates NAD+ from the NADH in glycolysis, and this regeneration allows for glycolysis to reoccur. So, alcohol 🍾. It looks like this:

We are producing ethyl alcohol! So we go through glycolysis, then we use the 2 pyruvates to create 2 acetaldehyde (a type of compound), which releases carbon dioxides. Then, the 2 acetaldehydes are converted through NADH to two ethanol alcoholic compounds, which then oxidize the NADH and turn it to NAD+, which is used to power glycolysis again. Now, let us apply this to dairy.

Fermentation is the fundamental biological process of getting an organic input and creating a completely different organic output. If the yeast then contains the code to produce proteins after the new genetic code is activated, guess what happens at the end of fermentation? You get the protein. And because genes, on average, code for about 10–20 different proteins at once, we get some pretty great stuff (a.k.a. different protein) out of the yeast! After we get the protein, it is purified and refined so that it can be only raw protein, and then ground, infused, and added to other molecules and products like water and lipids to produce creams, milk, and makeup, and more.

So why haven’t we scaled? Is it too slow? How do we scale? Well, yeast unfortunately has a life cycle, and we can use it forever, meaning we have to replenish the yeast, and we are not getting as much protein as we need out of the yeast to feed the world. Current efforts right now are focusing on how we can optimize this new protein supply chain production method (#mouthful).

Fermentation is not that slow. It builds up lactic acid in our bodies in minutes of not receiving enough oxygen. The problem of acellular agriculture is not really how fast, it is how much we get out of the yeast, or any microorganism we are using to produce the proteins and the form factor of production. That is why, to scale, we require bioreactors, commonly known in this case as fermentation vessels. They will do this:

You can think of them as these babysitters to the yeast. Instead of making sure the baby is fed and gets to play, they make sure that the yeast baby has good CO2 and oxygen levels, has the necessary factors and nutrients, is fermenting, and is producing protein (get yourself a babysitter that can do this!). Therefore, the future of the supply chain will be less like an assembly line and slaughterhouse, and more like a beer brewery, where we have these 20-liter stainless steel tanks constantly allowing yeast to ferment and give us proteins that will be used in industry. Everything from painting to food to aviation will benefit from a better leveraged and less environmentally and animal-ly detrimental production system for protein.

Recap and Final Thoughts

We get the gene from the animal, inject it into the microorganism, allow it to assimilate to the new genetic structure, (in the case of yeast and other microorganisms) let it ferment/produce protein, and then we purify the protein and combine it with other stuff to make products. Note that in the case of eggs, if we are not growing them directly from cells, we will just get the liquid egg inside, not necessarily the shell — just an interesting note. This is an edited photo (by me) w/help of CAS’ graphics for cell ag.

This is what the reinvention of the most important supply chain in the world looks like. Except, we are moving away from Petri dishes, and with funding, materials, support, and a global-wide shift, we are beginning to create and render factories like this: (11)

Here we have this beautiful and open technological fermentation and cell-growing bioreactors and packaging systems that quickly and sustainably pump out the meat. Also, notice the verdant landscape beyond the windows and the clear skies. That is the look we are going for.

Not only is this an example of an altruistic mission for technology, but it is a huge ROI, both economically and environmentally. This is why I urge you all to support the people all around the world and companies building out these systems, advocating for them, working on projects in them, and educating others about them.

Whether, you want to contribute by supporting and clapping this article, sharing it, investing, writing, telling other people about it, or just enjoying the technology, any support is important.

Even with its limitations, I believe that acellular agriculture has huge implications and possibilities for the future. It is up to us to work on it and see what those are.

Before you go…
My name is Okezue, a developer and researcher obsessed with learning and building things, especially when it involves any biology or computer science. Contact me: okezuebell@gmail.com! I write something new quite often, so I hope to see you again soon!
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