A BIG FUCKING DEAL: ''Scientists Convert Cellulose Into Amylose Starch''

[DeSwiss]

Nature World News
By Staff Reporter
Apr 17, 2013 07:06 AM EDT


[font color=darkgray]Percvial Zhang led the team that
found a way to convert cellulose
to starch (Photo : Percvial Zhang/
Virginia Tech)[/font]

Scientists have now found a way to convert cellulose to starch, a process that can be used to obtain food from all kinds of plants and not just food crops. Cellulose is found in all plant cells and is the most common carbohydrate in the world.

However, humans can't use cellulose as a food source as they lack the enzymes to break it down. In fact, no vertebrate can digest cellulose directly due to the lack of necessary enzymes. However, animals like cows, sheep and goats have symbiotic bacteria in their intestinal tract that help them digest the carbohydrate.

The study, led by Y.H. Percival Zhang, an associate professor from Virginia Tech, has found a way to obtain food from plants that could reduce the burden on agriculture. The study team produced a kind of starch from cellulose called amylase, which is a good source of dietary fiber.

"Cellulose and starch have the same chemical formula. The difference is in their chemical linkages. Our idea is to use an enzyme cascade to break up the bonds in cellulose, enabling their reconfiguration as starch," Zhang said. In the new process, 30 percent cellulose from corn stover was converted to amylose, and hydrolyzes. The rest of the cellulose was converted to glucose. Researchers say that cellulose from any plant can be converted into a starch.

Also: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

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- Well, this ought to upset a few applecarts. Monsanto, Cargill and ADM come to mind....

[Warren DeMontague]

1. Interesting stuff.

Does that mean we can start eating trees soon?

[Ghost Dog]

8. As long as we replace what we eat...

As long as we ring-fence certain essential natural ecosystems (to be left alone) and actively manage all other ecosystems for long-term stability (and that includes, of course, anthropic components), under an effective regulatory regime, we could possibly get away with massively exploiting the biosphere in this unnatural way.

[stevebreeze]

21. As a child of the 60 may know "some parts of a pine tree ARE edible."

[caseymoz]

2. Great, a real advance.

However, we will have to find a cure for obesity and a way to prevent population from doubling by 2060. Every breakthrough has its drawback.

[aquart]

3. Haven't worked out cause and effect on climate change yet?

Might want to get on it.

[caseymoz]

22. I just didn't think I should make that connection.

I hope you understand I never want to get to the point where I say preventing or alleviating hunger is a bad thing. That crosses the line into hateful.

I did say you had to work to make sure the population growth doesn't accelerate (which has happened every previous time we've dodged the bullet on worldwide famine). You somehow read a level of optimism into that which I wasn't expressing.

[DetlefK]

4. Starch is a polymer of alpha-glucose, cellulose is a polymer of beta-glucose.

Break up the beta, so it turns to a linear molecule, and you can rearrange it as alpha.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

5. This could mean chicken feed from saw dust.

[DeSwiss]

13. It might even replace this!

[center][/center]

[caseymoz]

23. Ew! No.

It will prevent them from feeding slaughterhouse waste to chickens, that is, the feed cows to chickens and chickens to cows.

No, I'm afraid pink slime will still be with us.

The most disgusting thing about that stuff? It reminds me of ice cream or frozen yogurt.

[Javaman]

24. I call it "Frogurt"

sorry, Simpsons reference, I couldn't resist.

[Robb]

33. Accuracy note: the stuff on top is ground chicken.

Oogey factor remains.

Edited to add: more accurately, "mechanically separated poultry."

[MOTRDemocrat]

6. K&R for science. nt

[Bernardo de La Paz]

7. Do not want: more hyper-processed calories with nutrition stripped off. nt

[DeSwiss]

9. Some places in the world don't have the choices we do. :-/ n/t

[quaker bill]

12. cellulose has no nutritive value to strip off

[Bernardo de La Paz]

14. The plants it comes in have nutritive value to strip off! Think!

Think! What is the difference between brown rice, white rice, and starch.

Brown rice has nutritive value.
White rice has that nutrition stripped off leaving almost entirely starch.
Starch is just calories without nutrition.

Do not want calories without nutrition.
Do not want agricorp processed food.

I don't eat white bread. I bake my own whole wheat oats ground flax seed bread.

[quaker bill]

16. nice, but we still don't eat the stalks

I am a botanist and do know plants.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

18. So support your 1st post by explaining your theory on how white rice has more nutrition than brown.

We do eat stalks. I had asparagus stalks for dinner last night.

Yes, brown rice and whole wheat and quinoa do not have stalks, but it has a heck of a lot more nutrition than white rice and white flour and white bread.

The solution to world nutrition problems is not to gin up a high tech conversion process that only corporate agribusiness can run and use an empty calorie highly processed food product. That's just like high fructose corn syrup.

Much better to develop agriculture that ordinary people can grow and eat and gain full nutrition from with out megabuck processing.

I really do not see your line of argument. Of course cellulose has no nutritive value to strip off. By time you process the plant to cellulose it is long gone.

Do not want cellulose or converted cellulose as a food stock. Why do you?

[Laelth]

10. Interesting.

But it has got to be cheaper and easier to simply grow more food than it is to convert cellulose into digestible sugars and starches.

I have my doubts regarding the practical utility of this breakthrough.

-Laelth

[DeSwiss]

11. If someone can survive off of tofu.....

...they can probably get by with this. And as I said up-thread, not everyone has the same choices we do. It would be better than slowly dying of malnutrition or malnourishment as millions in the world presently do.

There were 925 million undernourished people in the world in 2010, an increase of 80 million since 1990, despite the fact that the world already produces enough food to feed everyone — 7 billion people — and could feed almost double — 12 billion people. link

- With the added twist in addressing the impacts of climate change, it could be that a lot more people in the world will be in need of this cellulose/starch. Including us. It's the resourceful and adaptable which survive.....

[Laelth]

19. It's not a question of whether the substance produced is edible.

It certainly is. But, I suspect, it would be cheaper and more efficient to simply grow more food. And it would probably be more environmentally-conscious. I imagine that the energy required to convert cellulose into starch is immense--probably greater than the energy required to grow more food.

Still, this is an interesting scientific advance, and it may prove useful for something--what, precisely, I have no idea.

-Laelth

[quaker bill]

15. cellulosic ethanol?

if you can convert it to sugars, then ethanol is easy. Most plants put most of their energy into cellulose. I am not so interested in eating it, but driving the car on grass clippings sounds pretty good.

[Laelth]

20. Interesting that you mention ethanol.

That comparison immediately came to my mind when reading the OP. And, just as the idea of creating fuel from plants proved to be a colossal failure, I suspect the idea of creating food out of cellulose is equally impractical and inefficient.

As I said elsewhere, I hope this scientific breakthrough leads to something useful. I just doubt that this breakthrough shows us a useful way to create nutrition for animals that can not naturally digest cellulose. There are cheaper and more efficient ways to produce nutritious substances--i.e. it's cheaper and more efficient to just grow more food naturally.

-Laelth

[quaker bill]

26. depends on what you are feeding

if you are taking grass clippings and using the process to feed yeast, you can make fuel by mowing the lawn.

[Laelth]

30. Hmm ...

I suspect the fossil fuel energy needed to haul the grass clippings to the mega-plant doing the conversion would be greater than the energy realized in the conversion process. I could, of course, be wrong about that, but it's always a question of EROEI.

-Laelth

[eppur_se_muova]

25. Or butanol, which can be burned directly in engines designed for gasoline.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biobutanol#Production_of_biobutanol

[quaker bill]

28. exactly my point

the biggest problem with cellulosic ethanol has been scaling up the process of cellulose hydrolysis to starches. Hydrolysis of starches is something your saliva does everyday when you eat a cracker. Turning starches to sugar to feed yeast is simple.

[BadgerKid]

17. I can see it now

High fructose mulch syrup.

[Poll_Blind]

27. Does anyone know what temperature the enzyme needs for that 30% top conversion rate?

Just wondering.

PB

[FarCenter]

29. Cows convert cellulose to sugars and starches

[Evasporque]

31. Soylent green is PEOPLE!....

nt

[dembotoz]

32. this is why we need to keep funding science

not sure what we can do with this stuff but I am sure somebody does
and perhaps will create a large industry and jobs because of it