Using fermentation to make alternative proteins

Using space age technology to make “meat” out of thin air is science, not fiction.

New to the edible protein scene, Berkeley-based startup Air Protein offers an alternative to meat by using NASA-inspired fermentation technology to turn CO2 – what we exhale in the air – into a complete edible protein.

While other well-known meat alternative companies like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat make plant protein from soybeans and peas, Air Protein is the first to make ‘air-based’ protein by cultivating carbon from the air with microbes. The startup’s recent $ 32 million Series A funding round, which closed in January and led by investors ADM Ventures, Barclays, and GV (formerly Google Ventures), secures its place in the growing arena of meatless meat in the new wave of alternative protein technology – fermentation.

Founder and CEO Dr Lisa Dyson, award-winning research physicist and strategy consultant, hopes Air Protein’s technology “will create the most sustainable meat available and dramatically reduce the burden on our planet’s resources caused by our current processes. meat production, ”she said in an email.

In a 2016 TED talk, Dyson asked the audience, “Imagine being part of an astronaut crew heading to Mars or a distant planet. How would you feed this crew of astronauts with limited resources in the closed system of a spaceship? This is the question NASA scientists asked in the 1960s that led them to discover that microbes can convert CO2 into food for astronauts.

Dyson and his colleague Dr John Reed started this research while exploring ways to capture and recycle carbon to help address the climate crisis. They realized that they could use these microbes in the same way to make food for the people here on spaceship Earth.

“I began to focus on the effects of climate-related disasters while working to help rebuild New Orleans” – where her mother’s family lives – “after Hurricane Katrina,” Dyson said in the ‘E-mail. While exploring ways to help reduce or reverse climate change, Dyson learned that food production, from agriculture to processing to distribution, is a major contributor. The latest estimates show that the global food system accounts for over a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions.

In addition to this, the clearing of land for agriculture is one of the main drivers of deforestation around the world. In the Amazon rainforest, cattle ranching is responsible for 80% of current deforestation.

“As a scientist and businesswoman, I used my background and knowledge to find a way to make food in a more sustainable way,” Dyson wrote. “I focused on meat because meat production is the biggest food production burden on our planet.”

Using fermentation tanks, which Dyson calls “vertical protein farms,” ​​in a process similar to making yogurt or wine, Air Protein combines “elements from the air we breathe – carbon dioxide, l ‘oxygen and nitrogen (with) water and mineral nutrients’, Says the company. Renewable energy powers their proprietary probiotic production process whereby microbes convert CO2 into amino acids. The end product is a high protein flour that can be used like soybean or pea flour. This protein flour can then be made into a plethora of delicious and nutritious meatless meat products.

In conventional agriculture, plants take up inputs such as carbon dioxide from the air, nutrients from the soil, and energy from the sun. A crop can take months and huge amounts of soil to go from seed to harvest. Air Protein’s approach “uses exponentially less arable land, natural resources, and results in fewer greenhouse gas emissions,” Dyson wrote. Air protein farms are less geographically limited as they can extend vertically. Further, Dyson said, “The time it takes to make our meat is several days compared to the years it takes to make meat from a cow.”

The quest for sustainability is a big part of Air Protein’s vision and a big draw for the startup’s investors. “Air Protein is a compelling solution to the growing challenges of sustainably feeding the world’s population while combating climate change and biodiversity loss,” said Andrew Challis, co-head of major investments at Barclays, in a written statement.

Although Air Protein is the first company to make protein from air, it is not the only alternative protein company that relies on fermentation. Impossible Foods, for example, uses fermentation to make its special heme ingredient which gives its meatless meat its meaty flavor.

Fermentation technology enables a new wave of alternative protein products – meat, eggs and dairy – that are tasty and produced more sustainably and efficiently than their animal counterparts. And record levels of investment are enabling the technology.

In the first seven months of 2020 alone, $ 1.5 billion was invested in companies making alternative proteins, according to a report from the Good Food Institute (GFI) – and $ 435 million for those who use fermentation. With the constant and rapid rise in innovative fermentation technology and protein products, GFI calls fermentation the next mainstay of alternative proteins.

“Fermentation is fueling a new wave of alternative protein products with enormous potential for improving flavor, sustainability and production efficiency,” said the associate director of science and technology at the Good Food Institute, Dr. Liz Specht in the report. “Investors and innovators are recognizing this market potential, leading to increased activity in fermentation as an enabling platform for the alternative protein industry as a whole.”