It won’t be a surprise to anyone to learn that inhabiting Mars isn’t going to be easy. The planet has water but for a dessert it gets really cold, below 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

CUBES, a bio-engineering partnership between NASA and academia has made a breakthrough by transforming Martian regolith into agricultural soil, which is needed to grow food on Mars. But soil holds the key to another important survival resource, medicine. The process of turning plants to medicine doesn’t require any specialized equipment, is low energy intensive and has zero-waste, perfect for Mars.

After we have food on the table we will need a roof over our heads, that is where MARSHA comes in. MARSHA has built a 3D printer to print entire buildings using Martian regolith, keeping us safe from the radiation. (see more here)

The future of inhabiting mars is very much still in the R&D phase but as soon as the billionaires say go we are expecting a lift-off of bio-manufacturing startups in this space. (too many puns?)

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🧪Bio-concrete the future of cement

The cement manufacturing industry is extremely important in today’s time and is used in almost all construction projects. However, cement manufacturing releases tons of CO2. The industry contributes about 7% of global carbon dioxide emissions. This has spurned companies to rethink how the stuff is made, and some have utilized bacteria for the job.

Cement is essentially made by crushing and mixing limestone and clay, then heating this mixture in a kiln, whereafter it is mixed with gypsum. The CO2 emissions are attributed to the burning of fuel for the kiln (coal or natural gas), as well as the chemical reaction taking place inside the kiln, where calcium carbonates are converted to calcium oxides plus CO2. Thus, although cleaner energy is needed to lower the CO2 emissions, the current method of cement production is limited in its scope to reduce emissions due to the nature of the chemical reactions.

A way to bypass with process altogether is to use bacteria, specifically cyanobacteria. A company named Prometheus Materials is currently using cyanobacteria to produce what is called ‘bioconcrete’. The cyanobacteria are photosynthesising organisms that use light energy and specific nutrients to produce minerals in a process called biomineralization. These products are then mixed with an aggregate which end forming bio-concrete. This process releases a 10th of the CO2 emissions compared with normal process.

However, it is currently prohibitively expensive, and scaling up these types of bioprocesses to match a normal cement manufacturing processes could be unfeasible. Nevertheless, Prometheus Materials have shown that there are alternative routes to making cement, and some worth pursing!

🍔 Future of Cultured Meat

Will cultured meat ever be a feasible alternative to traditional livestock?

Due to environmental and ethical concerns surrounding traditional livestock, cultured meat is increasingly being considered as an alternative for meat consumption. Land usage is the biggest motivator for an alternative to livestock farming. Cultured meat is produced by sourcing cells from animals, expanding the cells in bioreactors, and forming the cells into a consumable meat source. More information about the process can be found here.

However, cultured meat is still in its early R&D phase and is extremely expensive. In 2013, the cost of the first cultured meat burger was $330 000. This is due to the large cost associated with the culture medium and the bioreactor setup. New research is being conducted into novel bioreactor setups and cheaper culture media, which will bring down the cost to under $10 according to certain studies.

Other factors which can hinder progress in the field are regulatory issues and customer acceptance. It is still unclear whether large-scale production of cultured meat will be allowed by governments and whether customers will opt for the consumption of cultured meat over traditional meat. This begs the question of whether the cultured meat industry is a worthy pursuit. Furthermore, more research needs to be done to understand the full environmental impact of cultured meat production, since this may be even larger than traditional livestock.