Recap SD-CAB Symposium 2012 "Food vs Fuels 2012" - Part I

Today, I attended a symposium organized by the San Diego Center for Algal Biotechnologies. This symposium started three years ago but has grown each year since then. This year the symposium is three days long and titled “Food and Fuels in the 21st Century”. Professor Kay and Mayfield both framed the relevancy of the symposium by mentioning that the increasing world population, our dependency on limited resources (fossil resources such as oil and phosphates, land and water) which are increasingly becoming scarce, coupled with stresses put on by global warming require an adaptive response by increasing the output of agricultural production to meet the need. Agricultural biotechnologies and algal biotechnologies can provide an answer to the challenges mentioned earlier. With this background, professor Mayfield introduced the first talk.

KEYNOTE: Rob Horsch, Gates Foundation

The Importance of Sustainable Productivity Growth Among Smallholder Farmers.

Rob Horsch goal was to introduce the Melinda Gates Foundation to the community, explain its goals and why it was interested in algal biotechnology. According to Rob Horsch, the Gates Foundation was created in 2000 and doubled in size by an endowment given by Warren Buffet in 2006. In the past, the Gates Foundation focussed half of its efforts on global health issues, a quarter went to global development and a quarter to development in the US. With the recent reallocation of funds, half is on spent on global development, and half is spent on global health. The program has focused on a couple of areas especially agricultural development. The reason for this focus came from the observation that agriculture is the source of livelihoods for billions of people but also represented the largest reseroir of poverty. Then in reverse improving agriculture will help the poorest the most. As an example, the first green revolution dropped poverty in India down to 40%. There are two dilemnas:

1. Farmers benefit from high prices while consumers benefit from low prices.
2. Poor farmers grow less than they consume and are net purchasers.

The Gates Foundation therefore thinks that the solution is increasing productivity so that more can be sold at lower cost. It matters whose productivity increases. Increasing productivity in the US does not help poor farmers in third world countries. It creates a dependency of poor people on rich countries for food donations. This approach is not sustainable. So there has been a shift to technology transfer to help the poorest. Rob Horsch notes that the US emphasize on biofuels may have helped bring the focus back to productivity. Another reason for helping the small farmer is that they are the ones who are least productive. Making improvements here will have the largest impacts because improvements can often be obtained through simple cheap measures (it is easier to improve something low). In light of the fact that many of the small farmers are net food consumers, increases in productivity here are especially important as it will eliminate the need for food donation programs from rich countries over time. The way the Gates foundation wants to help is by helping to develop a framework that can distribute public goods. Lastly, the Gates Foundation explained the rational for their interested in photosynthesis. Although a high risk approach, the Gates Foundation thinks that engineering photsynthetic organisms could be useful because there are huge potentials in increasing water use efficiency.

More talks will be posted as I write them up over the next couple of days.

In Other Words: Inspirational Videos - Cheryl Hayashi:"The Magnificence of Spider Silk"

On slight tangent of the more usual "bio-based economy" talk of late, I thought I would share something a bit more eclectic but nevertheless fascinating. Recently, linked up a slightly different TED talk dealing with spider silk. I found another TED talk given by Professor Cheryl Hayashi.

I had actually met Professor Hayashi once before. About 10-11 years ago, I invited her to Cal State Fullerton to give a talk about what she is researching. She graciously accepted back then. I can remember that back then everyone (from students to faculty members) was mesmerized by her professionalism, the exact mind displayed in her research,  and  most importantly the passion Professor Hayashi displayed for her research. I felt the spirit of her talk from back then in the following TED talk.

In Other Words: BBC - Playing God

In this week's blog, I just want to share a 1 hour BBC documentary that I happened across on YouTube. For the general audience, I think this is a great video to watch. I also learned something new watching this. Get some popcorn. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the documentary!

Journal Club:”An Engineered Microbial Platform for Direct Biofuel Production from Brown Macroalgae”

Cover of Science Issue 335.

It has been a while since we have done a journal club, and so today I thought I would write about an article I recently read. Adam J. Wargacki, who works in Yasuo Yoshikuni's group, recently published the above titled paper.

In light of problems associated with the use of fossil energy sources (cost, scarcity, environmental impact, and geopolitical considerations), the search for new energy sources is starting to become more important. The paper in discussion today proposes that a coupled system consisting of brown macroalgae and engineered bacteria could be used.

Of course there are more traditional biofuel feedstock sources such as corn and sugarcane. There a couple of hurdles such as the debate about “food versus fuel” and technical hurdles such as the degradation of lignocellulosic matter that need to be solved. We have previously discussed how microalgaecould get around the difficulties of corn and sugarcane in the production of bioefuels. At the current time, genetically manipulating these algae is technically difficult. So Bioarchitecture Labs is proposing the use of brown macroalgae (ak seaweed) as an industrial feedstock.