Researchers from Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT) and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland have successfully created food out of electricity and carbon dioxide, which they hope could one day be used to help solve world hunger.

According to reports, the single-cell protein can be produced wherever renewable energy is available, with uses ranging from food to animal feed.

“In practice, all the raw materials are available from the air. In the future, the technology can be transported to, for instance, deserts and other areas facing famine,” co-author of the research, Juha-Pekka Pitkanen, said in a statement. “One possible alternative is a home reactor, a type of domestic appliance that the consumer can use to produce the needed protein.”

The researchers achieved this result by exposing those raw materials and putting them in a small “protein reactor.” After exposing it to electrolysis, chemical decomposition occurs. After about two weeks, one gram of powder made of 50 percent protein and 25 percent carbohydrate.

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Researchers from UC Irvine have developed a way of unboiling eggs by restoring molecular proteins.
Image: Steve Zylius/UC Irvine

You can’t unscramble an egg, but you can unboil one.

Chemists from the University of California, Irvine (UC Irvine) have found a way to unboil an egg by quickly restoring molecular proteins.

But this development is not as much about the egg as it is the process, which has the potential to slash biotechnology costs. The researchers believe this new process has the ability to dramatically reduce costs for cancer treatments, food production, and other segments of the $160 billion global biotechnology industry.

“Yes, we have invented a way to unboil a hen egg,” said Gregory Weiss, UCI professor of chemistry and molecular biology & biochemistry. “In our paper, we describe a device for pulling apart tangled proteins and allowing them to refold. We start with egg whites boiled for 20 minutes at 90 degrees Celsius and return a key protein in the egg to working order.”

The main purpose of the process is to quickly and efficiently produce or recycle valuable molecular proteins.

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ECS student member Alireza Mahdavifar observes live bacteria moving inside the microfluidic channel.
Image: Georgia Tech/The Poultry Site

Along with a team of researchers out of Georgia Tech, ECS student member Alireza Mahdavifar has designed and fabricated the prototype of a microfluidic device that exploits cell movement to separate live and dead bacteria during food processing.

The research, entitled “A Nitrocellulose-Based Microfluidic Device for Generation of Concentration Gradients and Study of Bacterial Chemotaxis,” has been recently published in the Journal of The Electrochemical Society.

The new development consists of a microfluidic device that exploits cell movement to separate live and dead bacterial during food processing. The device is novel due to the fact that while screening for foodborne pathogens, it can be difficult to distinguish between viable and non-viable bacteria. Mahdavifar and the team out of Georgia Tech responded to this issue by creating a device that can separate live cells from dead ones for real-time pathogen detection.

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