Fermentation optimisation for a 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。它在我们超市产品中占50%。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，超过全球排放量的1%。它造成了包括红毛猩猩和太阳熊在内的大量栖息地丧失，小农的农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。如果我们要实现净零排放，就必须解决这些排放问题。Sun Bear Bioworks是一家总部位于英国的公司，利用合成生物学和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酵母菌株，以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4公斤二氧化碳和2000平方米的土地--两种情况下均节省80%。我们正在与伦敦大学学院的LeoRiosLab和伦敦帝国理工学院的RLALab合作开展该项目，从根本上优化我们的菌株和发酵过程，以快速有效地生产脂肪。原料成本对于扩大脂肪发酵过程来说是非常昂贵的-如果我们要对环境产生最大的影响，最大限度地提高脂质生产率至关重要。该项目将使一种可持续的棕榈油替代品能够在英国国内大规模生产，创造生物技术和食品生产方面的就业机会，并扭转巨额贸易逆差。这是建立在我们作为快速启动奖项目10045430“油精密发酵的替代原料”的一部分所开展的工作基础上的。这使我们能够发展我们的酵母改造能力，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.