Biochemistry Saves the World (again)

 

No-one can fail to be impressed by the development of

the mRNA technologies that have led to the successful production of

novel and effective vaccines against the Covid 19 corona-virus.

Undoubtedly, in the near future, controlled and directed protein synthesis

technologies will be employed in thousands of novel treatments

at the molecular level.

It all has happened because biochemists across the world had the skill, will and near unlimited funds to achieve a clear goal in record time. Such projects are a rarity. The Manhattan project to develop the ‘atom bomb’ and the space project landing men on the moon are the only two that come to mind. What has become clear to the world is equivalent technological power now wielded by biochemists in the world of molecular biology. 

All of the above having been said, do we have another pressing issue of the above kind?

Yes, of course we have the climate change threat and so the global project to ‘decarbonise’ our energy consumption is coming into focus. The question is, can the biochemists do it again?

Tucked away in the corners of research are the plant biochemists. Tucked away within this group are the plant bio-energeticists. Those scientists who study photosynthesis, the process by which green plants capture and transform the energy from sunlight by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen. Oxygen is a waste product of plants but the hydrogen is used to generate the universal electrochemical potentials that power the processes that build all life.

Hold on, hydrogen, isn’t that the combustible gas that produces only water as a waste product? For over a century now biochemists have dreamed of harnessing the biochemical splitting of water on this very wet planet to provide a clean limitless fuel. It turns out to be tricky, but this is a new world with massive powerful bio-technologies. How far have our underfunded band progressed.?

I love the hydrogen-based technologies. Firstly you can burn the stuff so the internal combustion engine, so exquisitely engineered over so many years, remains a central technology. Secondly, via the fuel cell, hydrogen can make electricity directly and has done so for a hundred years, Thirdly it can be stored in tanks. What’s not to love?

A quick scan of the literature shows some emerging technologies for making hydrogen using photosynthetic mechanisms. 

‘Hybrid bio-photo-electro-chemical cells for solar water splitting’ is a title in Nature Communications from 2016. The paper illustrates the central problems in a nutshell:

1. Good science, small time funding

2. We depend on plants for food.

The latter point is the one that be-devils all bio-fuel projects. You need space to grow plants for bio-fuel and to. grow plants to eat. Who wins on a small planet with lots of people?

However it is clear that their plant-chemical hybrid works thanks to the amazing in-leaf modular apparatus known as the thylakoid stack which they isolate and hybridise with conventional chemical metal catalysts. It yields hydrogen.

In the paragraph above though is the holy grail, the so called thylakoid stack. These complex structures are isolated from chloroplasts in which they are found. Chloroplasts are found in leaves and so to scale the technology you need lots of leaves. Fortunately mostly in food sources we don't eat the leaves generally but in the big leafy crops we do. It's a step forward though from the ethanol-corn biofuel technologies though.

But what if you could make thylakoid stacks or their analogues?

Scroll forward to 2019 and move to China. ‘Artificial Thylakoid for the Coordinated Photoenzymatic Reduction of Carbon Dioxide’. And so on ..

I think the picture is clear whether or not you are a plant bio-energetics wonk. Minds are turning to photosynthesis as molecular technologies advance.

Imagine if the power of the molecular biologists and biochemists currently in pharma got the funding for this kind of green-startup?

I for one know that they could de-carbonise this planet. A Great Project = the will, the brains, the money and the goal.

Just don’t leave it too late.