Fermentation optimisation for a palm oil alternative

棕榈油随处可见。它存在于食品、化妆品和生物燃料中。我们50%的超市产品中都有这种成分。棕榈油在植物油市场上是独一无二的；它在你的嘴里融化，非常适合烹饪，是一种高产作物。然而，棕榈油是最大的碳排放者之一，因为为了给种植园让路而失去了热带雨林和泥炭地--在1900万公顷的热带土地上，棕榈油贡献了超过5亿吨二氧化碳，占全球排放量的1%以上。它已经造成了大量的栖息地损失，包括猩猩和太阳熊，而且小农户的产品往往得不到公平的价格。英国政府承诺到2050年实现净零排放；英国20%的排放来自农业和食品供应链。如果我们要达到净零排放，就必须解决这些排放问题。太阳熊生物工程公司是一家总部位于英国的公司，使用合成生物学和精密发酵来制造棕榈油的替代品。我们正在优化一种天然的产油酵母菌株，以快速高效地从食物垃圾中生产我们的油脂。我们的工艺为每公斤棕榈油节省4公斤二氧化碳和2000平方米的土地--在两种情况下都节省了80%。我们正在与伦敦大学学院的LeoRiosLab和伦敦帝国理工学院的RLALab合作开展这个项目，从根本上优化我们的菌株和发酵过程，以快速高效地生产脂肪。原料成本对于扩大脂肪发酵过程来说非常昂贵--如果我们要对环境产生最大的影响，最大限度地提高脂肪的生产率是至关重要的。该项目将使一种可持续的棕榈油替代品能够在英国国内规模化生产，在生物技术和食品生产方面创造就业机会，并扭转巨大的贸易逆差。这是建立在我们作为快速启动奖的一部分开展的工作基础上的，项目10045430“用于精准发酵油的替代原料”，使我们能够发展我们的酵母修饰能力，并与非糖原料合作。

Palm oil is everywhere. It is in food, cosmetics and biofuels. It is in 50% of our supermarket products. Palm oil is unique in the vegetable oil market; it melts in your mouth, is great for cooking and is a high-yielding crop. However, palm oil is one of the biggest carbon emitters due to loss of tropical rainforest and peatland to make way for plantations - it contributes over 500 million tonnes of CO2e, over 1% global emissions, from 19 million hectares of tropical land. It has caused significant habitat loss, including for the Orangutan and Sun Bear, and all too often smallholder farmers do not receive a fair price for their produce.The UK Government has committed to reaching Net Zero by 2050; 20% of UK emissions stem from agriculture and the food supply chain. These emissions must be tackled if we are to reach net zero.Sun Bear Bioworks is a UK-based company using synthetic biology and precision fermentation to make an alternative to palm oil. We are optimising a naturally oil-producing yeast strain to produce our oil from food waste quickly and efficiently. Our process saves 4kg CO2 and 2000m2 of land for every kg of palm oil - a saving in both cases of 80%. We are working with the LeoRiosLab at University College London and the RLALab at Imperial College London on this project to radically optimise our strains and fermentation process to produce fats quickly and efficiently. Feedstock costs are prohibitively expensive for scaling fermentation processes in fats - maximising lipid productivity is vital if we are to have the greatest environmental impact. This project will enable a sustainable palm oil alternative to be produced domestically at scale in the UK, creating jobs in biotechnology and food production and reversing a substantial trade deficit.This builds on the work we carried out as part of our Fast Start award, project 10045430 "Alternative feedstock for precision fermentation of oil", which has allowed us to develop our yeast modification capabilities and work with non-sugar feedstocks.