A Script for Tech Update Channel – Food from Thin Air

Now many of our viewers may be very concerned about our rapidly dying environment. Luckily,
our scientist seems to have found a big-brain method of turning a seemingly useless gaseous waste
that most cars and us humans produce – carbon dioxide – into food, or at least, what makes our food,
starch. The researchers claim that they can produce starch 8.5 times faster than maize with their new
tech. Essentially, this is fast food from thin air! [obvious excitement] Groundbreaking progress
indeed, just like this shout-out to our sponsor…

[Sponsorship information and intro clip]

For your information, starch is a very complex chemical, a very long chain of glucose, that usually
only the chemical engineers of nature – plants – can produce, using impossible processes and gnarly
helper substances that are called enzymes. The enzymes per se are nearly impossible to synthesize
in lab environments without getting help from the plants themselves. Just to add yet another level
of complexity, the enzymes, coenzymes, and the chemicals produced by the enzymes are reactive
as well. Like a classroom riot, you will never know if the students or the teacher wins.

Our scientists have tried producing starch synthetically from the very basic carbon dioxide, but our
yield pales in comparison to our natural competitors. Well, you might ask “Why? I thought our
industrialized factories can do anything and everything better now.” To that we can now proudly
say “Almost.” as a new method taking a radically different pathway have been developed by a group
of Chinese researchers. I will not bore you with the technical details, but Daniel from the lab
department will.

[Cam switches to Daniel from the lab, wearing a cool outfit and lab coat]

Imagine you are building a Lego set, let’s say a Lego spaceship. You might start from the bricks,
and then you build the components of the spaceship using the bricks – maybe a door, a window, an
engine, etcetera – and then you assemble these components in a specific order to get a spaceship.
Making starch from carbon dioxide is sort of like that, except that everything is done on a
microscopic level. The Carbon from carbon dioxide is like your bricks, smaller molecules like
methanol and DHA are like your windows and engines, and starch is your spaceship. [Shows an
animation of the following Lego building process, from bricks to a spaceship fleet] Scientists refer
to any components that include only one brick (carbon) C1 modules, and anything with 3 carbon
atoms C3 modules. Those are like bigger parts put together from smaller parts in your build, for
example the left wing of your spaceship. You can then use C3 modules to build C6 modules, like
finally putting your spaceship project together using assembled cockpit, wings, and cargo
compartments. Since starch is a polymer – a long chain of C6 modules – that has an arbitrarily big
number of carbons in it, we call it a Cn module, analogous to a fleet of Lego spaceships.

[Shows the following flowchart to aid the explanation]

(Cai et al.)

Now on to the building process, ASAP, or Artificial Starch Anabolic Pathway. We start with CO2;
we convert it into methanol using well established methods to get our first C1 module. That is then
converted into formaldehyde via an oxidation reaction, where we finish our C1 journey.

Continuing, we build a GAP, not any gap, a useful GAP. Our last C1 module is assembled into a C3
module called DHA, and then turned into GAP, another C3 modules that is easier to work with in
later steps because it has more reactive corners that likes to bind with each other. These steps uses
a lot of enzymes and coenzymes (helper substances) and requires energy. Not all C1 modules are
turned into GAP though, some are turned into a similar C3 chemical called DHAP which leads us
to the next step of our journey.

[presents a clip of two dogs chasing each other’s tails]

The GAPs and DHAPs both have a head and a tail. GAP’s head really likes DHAP’s tail, and
DHAP’s head really likes GAP’s tail, just like yours and your neighbor’s dogs. We put two of them
together so one of the heads chase the other’s tail, and the other’s head chases the first head’s tail,
just like your dog and his friend cha
sing each other’s tails to sniff each other’s butt. But this time, instead of a funny TikTok puppy
video, we produce a beautiful ring-like C6 module phosphoglucose, the final building block of
starch that is remarkably similar to glucose – a simple sugar that is present in most fruits.

[shows a simplified cartoon animation of DHAP reacting with GAP alongside narration]

Our viewers with a chemistry degree or a good memory might remember at the start of this video
we mentioned that starch is basically a glucose chain. Well, since we have phosphoglucose that, as
you might have guessed, is glucose with a reactive phosphate group attached, we can just stick one
to another to make a long chain. That is exactly what the scientists did. So here we have it, almighty
starch, made from car exhaust and your morning sighs.

[Cam switches to the first presenter who appears to just wake up, yawning]

Ahhh… While all that sound like magic to me. Our smart viewers might say now: “didn’t you say
enzymes are hard to make and might interact with chemicals?” [pause for a brief moment] I’m glad
you asked. [whimsical] That is exactly the innovation here, new enzymes, new pathway. The
scientists have found better enzymes that behaves well and introduced methods to stop them from
fighting each other. This is another reason why this novel process is so much more efficient, as the
newly discovered enzymes are easy to obtain and actually working to produce stuff, like students in
a well-behaved class.

All that might sound a bit too good to be true, and that’s because it is. These processes can only be
done in well controlled lab environments so far. Mass production of starch from carbon dioxide
might have to wait a couple of years for our scientists and engineers to work together and develop
more reliable industrial processes and machinery to do all the work efficiently without making it go
“kaboom”.

With that bombshell, we conclude our tech update this week. Do YOU want to eat breads made
from air? Leave your comments down below. Hit like and subscribe if you liked our content, dislike
if you don’t and see you again soon.

[Outro]

Reference:
Cai, Tao et al. "Cell-Free Chemoenzymatic Starch Synthesis From Carbon Dioxide". Science, vol 373,
no. 6562, 2021, pp. 1523-1527. American Association For The Advancement Of Science (AAAS),
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abh4049.