Starch is the main energy source for animals and an important industrial raw material. Its source mainly relies on plant synthesis (1).
By designing 11 core reactions and optimizing the rate-limiting enzyme through directed evolution and other methods, researchers such as Ma Yanhe from the Tianjin Institute of Engineering and Biotechnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, successfully used hydrogen as energy and raw materials to convert carbon dioxide into starch (1) .
This work was published in Science(1) on September 24, 2021.
Comments:
A grand concept, although the efficiency is very low compared to conventional industrial production (“In a chemoenzymatic system with spatial and temporal segregation, the artificial starch anabolic pathway (ASAP), driven by hydrogen, converts CO2 to starch at a rate of 22 nanomoles of CO2 per minute per milligram of total catalyst, an~8.5-fold higher rate than starch synthesis in maize”), but it may have application value in some very special occasions in the future, such as long-term space navigation; in addition, combined with The optimization of carbon dioxide capture technology that is currently emerging is also an important expansion direction (2).
Reference:
1. T. Cai et al., Cell-free chemoenzymatic starch synthesis from carbon dioxide. Science (80-. ). 373,1523–1527 (2021).
2. A. Al-Mamoori, A. Krishnamurthy , A. A.Rownaghi, F. Rezaei, Carbon Capture and Utilization Update. Energy Technol.5, 834–849 (2017).
Original link:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abh4049
