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when you hear the word fermentation you may think of the spice of bubbly kimchi the smell of rising bread or the tang of a good beer these techniques have been part of human life for millennia but today fermentation is being hacked for the food of the future those tiny microbes are helping us solve the global challenge of how to produce more and more food for more and more people and we're not just talking about stuff like bread like one of my favorite bacterial genuses lactobacillus let's break this down when microorganisms like bacteria or fungi do fermentation they're breaking down some kind of sugar like glucose into smaller building blocks it's how they make energy for themselves but we've been harnessing that process since the dawn of civilization using
these microbes and their byproducts to make tasty stuff for ourselves too when it comes to food there are three main types of this process lactic acid fermentation which is used to make things like yogurt pickles and sourdough bread ethanol alcohol fermentation which is used to make things like wine beer and more and acetic acid fermentation which makes things like vinegars and kombucha when we talk about fermentation for the future of food though we mean something a little bit different the traditional fermentation we have been talking about can be used to produce non-meat products like fermenting soybeans into tempeh which is a vegan meat alternative but there's also something called whole
biomass fermentation where the microbes themselves are the food for example corn is a company that takes filamentous fungi and ferments them into what's called mycoprotein so these fermented fungi are the protein-packed product then we get into real sci-fi territory with precision fermentation this is where we can tell a microbe to produce the exact same enzymes and proteins that are found in real animal products for example a company called perfect day takes the genomic sequence that we know codes for beta lactoglobulin a type of whey protein and they can copy and paste that sequence into the genome of a fungus this fungus now has the instructions to create whey as part of
its natural fermentation process and because it's not coming from an animal this milk doesn't contain any hormones or antibiotics that's because these problematic compounds often end up in traditional meats and animal products to address issues that come with modern industrial animal agriculture but that's kind of a whole other video this precision production pipeline can be used to make all kinds of different molecules that are a part of many animal products things like eggs and cheese these proteins and enzymes can be used to add flavor or texture to an animal-free product like with impossible foods they use yeast as little factories to produce a molecule called heme the
compound that gives meat its meaty taste and that makes their plant-based burgers bleed precision fermentation could also solve some of the challenges that other alternative meat endeavors are facing for example cell-based agriculture aims to create meat by growing animal cells outside of the animal so this involves taking a small harmless sample from say a cow and then proliferating those cells in the lab into something like a steak fermentation could be used to produce the components that help keep those cultivated meat cells healthy and happy as they proliferate but an actual animal has been using their muscles the forces of motion and gravity have been acting on that muscle and forming it in
really key ways that are extremely difficult to recreate in a petri dish so fermentation could again be used to produce things like collagen and fibrinectin these proteins could hold those lab-grown cells together in a way that may more accurately mimic the steak we know and love structurally and texturally so all three of these fermentation techniques present a huge opportunity to solve some of the world's biggest challenges like an ever-expanding world population requiring more and more food especially protein fermentation-based food technologies could provide that protein but without the land and water use the pollution and the greenhouse gas emissions of traditional animal agriculture and plus
it's good news for the animals too but the cost of taking some of this to the big time can be astronomical especially with precision fermentation for one fermentation-based milk company for example the cost of producing enough milk to go commercial would result in a product that costs four times its animal based competitor so lots more research needs to be done into how to get the absolute most out of those little suckers maximizing their efficiency as tiny bio factories while also trying to minimize cost and the question still remains would you buy alternative protein like this would you eat it one of the biggest hurdles may be convincing people that meat or milk or other animal free animal products that come from microbial
fermentation are just as tasty safe and nutritious as the real thing so i guess that's a job for us microbe enthusiasts to get on stat if you want more on alternative food production you can check out this video here and if you have questions about this topic or others like it let us know in the comments below make sure you subscribe to seeker for all of your microbial news flashes and as always thanks so much for watching i'll see you next time
