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4 HEALTH AND LABORATORY MAGAZINE

ARTIFICIAL PHOTOSYNTHESIS

CAN PRODUCE FOOD IN

COMPLETE DARKNESS

Australian researchers have developed a
device that can generate power from
heat radiation using a mechanism
similar to night vision goggles.

For millions of years, pho- said corresponding author fourfold more energy that we are currently work- bers with less inputs,” said
tosynthesis has evolved in Robert Jinkerson, a UC Riv- efficient than growing it ing on we might be able to Jinkerson.
plants to turn water, car- erside assistant professor photosynthetically. Yeast grow crops with acetate
bon dioxide, and the ener- of chemical and environ- production is about 18-fold as an extra energy source This approach to food
gy from sunlight into plant mental engineering. more energy efficient than to boost crop yields,” said production was submitted
biomass and the foods we how it is typically cultivated Marcus Harland-Dunaway, to NASA’s Deep Space
eat. However, this process In order to integrate all the using sugar extracted from a doctoral candidate in the Food Challenge where
is very inefficient, with only components of the system corn. Jinkerson Lab and co-lead it was a Phase I winner.
around 1% of the energy together, the output of the author of the study. The Deep Space Food
found in sunlight ending up electrolyzer was optimized “We were able to grow Challenge is an interna-
in the plant. Researchers at to support the growth of food-producing organisms By liberating agriculture tional competition where
the University of California, food-producing organisms. without any contributions from complete depend- prizes are awarded to
Riverside and the Universi- Electrolyzers are devic- from biological photo- ence on the sun, artificial teams to create novel
ty of Delaware have found es that use electricity to synthesis. Typically, these photosynthesis opens the and game-changing food
a way to bypass the need convert raw materials like organisms are cultivated door to countless possi- technologies that require
for biological photosyn- carbon dioxide into useful on sugars derived from bilities for growing food minimal inputs and max-
thesis altogether and molecules and products. plants or inputs derived under the increasingly imize safe, nutritious, and
create food independent The amount of acetate from petroleum—which difficult conditions im- palatable food outputs
of sunlight by using artificial produced was increased is a product of biological posed by anthropogenic for long-duration space
photosynthesis. while the amount of salt photosynthesis that took climate change. Drought, missions.
used was decreased, re- place millions of years ago. floods, and reduced land
The new research, pub- sulting in the highest levels This technology is a more availability would be “Imagine someday giant
lished on June 23, 2022, of acetate ever produced efficient method of turning less of a threat to global vessels growing tomato
in the journal Nature in an electrolyzer to date. solar energy into food, as food security if crops for plants in the dark and on
Food, uses a two-step compared to food produc- humans and animals grew Mars—how much easier
electrocatalytic process “Using a state-of-the-art tion that relies on biolog- in less resource-intensive, would that be for future
to convert carbon diox- two-step tandem CO2 ical photosynthesis,” said controlled environments. Martians?” said co-author
ide, electricity, and water electrolysis setup devel- Elizabeth Hann, a doctoral Crops could also be grown Martha Orozco-Cárdenas,
into acetate, the form of oped in our laboratory, we candidate in the Jinkerson in cities and other areas director of the UC River-
the main component of were able to achieve a high Lab and co-lead author of currently unsuitable for side Plant Transformation
vinegar. Food-producing selectivity towards acetate the study. agriculture, and even pro- Research Center.
organisms then consume that cannot be accessed vide food for future space
acetate in the dark to grow. through conventional CO2 The potential for employ- explorers. Article: “A hybrid inor-
Combined with solar pan- electrolysis routes,” said ing this technology to grow ganic–biological artificial
els to generate electricity corresponding author crop plants was also inves- “Using artificial photo- photosynthesis system
to power the electroca- Feng Jiao at University of tigated. Cowpea, tomato, synthesis approaches to for energy-efficient food
talysis, this hybrid organ- Delaware. tobacco, rice, canola, and produce food could be a production” by Elizabeth C.
ic-inorganic system could green pea were all able to paradigm shift for how we Hann, Sean Overa, Marcus
increase the conversion Experiments showed that utilize carbon from acetate feed people. By increas- Harland-Dunaway, Andrés
efficiency of sunlight into a wide range of food-pro- when cultivated in the dark. ing the efficiency of food F. Narvaez, Dang N. Le,
food, up to 18 times more ducing organisms can be production, less land is Martha L. Orozco-Cárde-
efficient for some foods. grown in the dark directly “We found that a wide needed, lessening the nas, Feng Jiao and Robert
on the acetate-rich elec- range of crops could take impact agriculture has on E. Jinkerson, 23 June 2022,
“With our approach we trolyzer output, including the acetate we provided the environment. And for Nature Food.
sought to identify a new green algae, yeast, and and build it into the major agriculture in non-tradi-
way of producing food that fungal mycelium that pro- molecular building blocks tional environments, like DOI: 10.1038/s43016-022-
could break through the duce mushrooms. Produc- an organism needs to outer space, the increased 00530-x
limits normally imposed by ing algae with this tech- grow and thrive. With some energy efficiency could
biological photosynthesis,” nology is approximately breeding and engineering help feed more crew mem-