Using space-age technology to make “flesh” out of nothing is science, not fiction.
A new participant in the edible protein scene, Berkeley-based startup Air Protein, makes an alternative to meat using NASA-inspired fermentation technology to transform CO2 – which we exhale in the air – into a complete edible protein.
While other well-known alternative meat companies, such as Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, produce vegetable proteins from soybeans and peas, Air Protein is the first to produce “air-based” proteins by cultivating carbon from the air with microbes. The startup’s recent $ 32 million Series A financing round, which ended in January and led by investors ADM Ventures, Barclays and GV (formerly Google Ventures), secures its place in the field of rapidly expanding meatless meat in the new wave of alternative protein technology – fermentation.
Founder and CEO Dr. Lisa Dyson, an award-winning research physicist and strategy consultant, hopes that Air Protein’s technology “creates the most sustainable meat available and significantly reduces the burden on our planet’s resources being caused by our current meat production processes, ”she said in an email.
In a 2016 TED talk, Dyson asked the audience: “Imagine that you are part of a crew of astronauts traveling to Mars or some distant planet. How would you feed that crew of astronauts with limited resources in the closed system of a spaceship? This is the question that NASA scientists asked in the 1960s that led them to the discovery that microbes can convert CO2 into food for astronauts.
Dyson and his colleague Dr. John Reed discovered this research while exploring ways to capture and recycle carbon to help with the climate crisis. They realized that they could use these microbes in a similar way to make food for people here on the Earth spacecraft.
“I started to focus on the effects of climate disasters while working to help rebuild New Orleans” – where her mother’s family lives – “after Hurricane Katrina,” Dyson said in an email. While investigating ways in which it could contribute to reducing or reversing climate change, Dyson learned that food production, from agriculture to processing and distribution, is a major contributor. The latest estimates show that the global food system accounts for more than a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions.
In addition, deforestation for agriculture is one of the biggest drivers of deforestation worldwide. In the Amazon rainforest, livestock is the cause of 80% of current deforestation.
“As a scientist and businesswoman, I used my training and knowledge to find a way to make food more sustainable,” wrote Dyson. “I focused on meat, because meat production represents the biggest burden on our planet in food production.”
Using fermentation tanks, which Dyson refers to as “vertical protein farms”, in a process similar to making yogurt or wine, Air Protein combines “elements of the air we breathe – carbon dioxide, oxygen and nitrogen (with) water and mineral nutrients, “says the company. Renewable energy fuels its proprietary probiotic production process, whereby microbes convert CO2 into amino acids. The end product is a protein-rich flour that can be used as soy flour or This protein flour can then be transformed into a multitude of delicious and nutritious meatless meat products.
In conventional agriculture, plants absorb inputs like carbon dioxide from the air, nutrients from the soil and energy from the sun. A harvest can take months and a large amount of land space to go from seed to harvest. Air Protein’s approach “uses exponentially less arable land, natural resources and causes less greenhouse gas emissions,” wrote Dyson. Air Protein farms are less geographically limited because they can expand vertically. In addition, Dyson said, “The time it takes to make our meat is days, compared to the years it takes to make meat from a cow.”
The search for sustainability is a big part of Air Protein’s vision and a great attraction for startup investors. “Air protein is an attractive solution to the growing challenges of sustainably feeding the world’s population, while addressing climate change and loss of biodiversity,” said Andrew Challis, co-director of Principal Investments at Barclays, in a written statement.
Although Air Protein is the first company to produce protein from the air, it is not the only alternative protein company that depends on fermentation. Impossible Foods, for example, uses fermentation to make its special heme ingredient, which gives meatless meat its fleshy flavor.
Fermentation technology is enabling a new wave of alternative protein products – meat, eggs and dairy products – that are tasty and produced in a more sustainable and efficient way than their animal equivalents. And record levels of investment are enabling the technology.
In the first seven months of 2020 alone, $ 1.5 billion was invested in companies producing alternative proteins, according to a report by the Good Food Institute (GFI) – and $ 435 million of that was for those using fermentation. Seeing the steady and rapid increase in innovative fermentation technology and protein products, GFI is calling fermentation the next pillar of alternative proteins.
“Fermentation is driving a new wave of alternative protein products with enormous potential to improve the taste, sustainability and efficiency of production,” said the Good Food Institute’s associate director of science and technology, 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.”