Gerrit Niezen

This week I didn't actually highlight any new articles I've been reading, nor did I finish any of the four (?) books I'm reading at the moment. I am however, very busy with bunch of different projects, one of which I'd like to share.

Gas fermentation with an open-source bioreactor

Back in 2022 I wrote about open sourcing precision fermentation. While precision fermentation is about modifying microbes like yeast and bacteria to create products such as dairy proteins (whey, casein), fats or insulin, gas fermentation refers to using gases (e.g. carbon dioxide and hydrogen) as the main inputs to growing the microbes.

What makes gas fermentation interesting? You don't need traditional feedstocks (e.g. sugars from corn) and can basically grow stuff from thin air! In reality you need to get the carbon dioxide and hydrogen from somewhere, and green hydrogen is made using electricity. So if I'm growing protein using this method, I'd call it electro-protein.

At LabCrafter, we've been working with AMYBO on building an add-on kit for the Pioreactor open-source bioreactor to perform gas fermentation, which we're calling the electroPioreactor. AMYBO, Imperial College London and the University of Edinburgh recently received some grant funding from the Cellular Agriculture Manufacturing (CARMA) Hub to build an affordable aseptic version of the electroPioreactor, and we're helping them by supplying the hardware! It's still early days, but you can follow along on GitHub.

In more personal news, it's been snowing in Swansea this week! Even on the beach, for the first time in around 13 years I think.

Again, please get in touch in the comments if you have any questions or feedback!

Comment on this post