Optimising feedstock utilisation for a fermentation-derived palm oil alternative

到处都是棕榈油。它存在于食品、化妆品和生物燃料中。我们超市里50%的产品都有。棕榈油在植物油市场上是独一无二的;它融化在你的嘴里，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，因为热带雨林和泥炭地的损失为种植园让路-它从1900万公顷的热带土地上贡献了超过5亿吨的二氧化碳当量，占全球排放量的1%以上。它造成了严重的栖息地损失，包括猩猩和太阳熊，而且小农的农产品往往得不到公平的价格。百分之二十英国的碳排放来自农业和食品供应链，如果我们要达到这些目标，就必须解决这些排放问题。Sun Bear Bioworks正在使用精确发酵来制造棕榈油的替代品。我们正在优化一种天然产油的酵母菌株，以便快速有效地从食物垃圾中生产我们的油。我们的工艺每生产一公斤棕榈油可节省5.7公斤二氧化碳和2000平方米的土地--两种情况下均节省80%。我们正在与Evolutor合作开展该项目，以优化我们的菌株处理低品位可持续原料的能力。原料占我们大部分的规模加工成本，如果我们要创造最大的环境影响，找到一种可扩展的糖替代品至关重要。这建立在我们作为快速启动奖项目10045430“油的精密发酵的替代原料”的一部分所开展的工作的基础上，该项目使我们能够证明我们的酵母菌株中淀粉代谢的关键酶的表达。

Palm oil is everywhere. It's in food, cosmetics and biofuels. It's 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% of 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 the smallholders 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 and these emissions must be tackled if we are to reach these targets.Sun Bear Bioworks is using precision fermentation to make an alternative to palm oil. We are optimising a yeast strain that naturally produces oil, in order to create our oil from food waste quickly and efficiently. Our process saves 5.7kg CO2 and 2000m2 land for every kg of palm oil - a saving in both cases of 80%. We are working with Evolutor on this project to optimise our strain's ability to process low-grade, sustainable feedstocks. Feedstock accounts for most of our process cost at scale, and finding a scalable sugar alternative is vital if we are to create maximum environmental impact. 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 prove expression of key enzymes in our yeast strain for the metabolism of starch.