Month: September 2022

75% OF VANILLA EXTRACTS are synthetic. "Today, most vanillin is produced from the petrochemical raw material guaiacol. As of 2001, the annual demand for vanillin was 12,000 tons, but only 1,800 tons of natural vanillin were produced. The remainder was produced by chemical synthesis." Synthetic biology is tackling this with a gene construct for one of the 30+ vanilla variants. " " http://lnkd.in/dccEzFc View in LinkedIn

SYNBIO VANILLA. SAFFRON AND MORE. "Evolva is about to start marketing yeast-made vanillin, the main component of vanilla. Amaris is working on saffron. Sanofi began commercial production of an essential malaria drug using baker’s yeast genetically modified by Amyris. The drug’s ingredient is usually extracted from a shrub. Amyris is also making a moisturizer for cosmetics that is typically extracted from either olives or shark livers."" " http://lnkd.in/dvUJsGt View in LinkedIn

SYNBIO FLAVORINGS IN THE WORKS. "Isobionics and Allylix, are separately producing valencene, a flavoring usually extracted from oranges, and nootkatone, a grapefruit flavor that also has potential as an insect repellent."" " http://lnkd.in/dvUJsGt View in LinkedIn

GMO CHOICE: unsustainable petroleum sources for a large number of daily chemicals, or synbio GMO green factories? View in LinkedIn

CONTROVERSY ABOUT SYNBIO products, such as the flavoring vanilla and the malaria drug artemisinin (both from Amaris in California) is based on arguments about safety and destroying the jobs of indigenous peoples. In the case of vanilla extract, the vast majority of currently marketed products are made from unsustainable petroleum byproducts. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation supported the artemisinin work, only after careful study of its benefits, convinced that it would even out the cyclical devastating crashes in production resulting in 100 million malaria patients without drug access. View in LinkedIn

SYNBIO DEBATE is a replay of when synthetic chemists discovered modern dyes. In trying to synthesize quinine from aniline in 1856, William Perkin accidentally discovered Aniline Purple, and started the synthetic dye industry. "These advances led to the explosive growth of the German and Swiss dye industry, while simultaneously dismantling the import of indigo and other natural dyes from distant tropical locales. The shift from tropical artesanal sources to western synthesized dyes was complete." Economic evolution." " http://lnkd.in/dqHXeRT View in LinkedIn

SQUALINE FROM SHARK LIVER helps support the 100 million sharks massacred annually to support its use in cosmetics, especially moisturizers, and in some vaccines. Efforts including the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab are underway to make squalene by synthetic biology fermentation." " http://lnkd.in/d3BfRtN View in LinkedIn

SHARK SQUALENE. "The most abundant source of squalene is from the livers of deep sea sharks to be found at depths of as much as 1,500 metres. It occurs in Shark liver oils as the major component, comprising up to 85% of the oil. Squalene is not found in sharks living at shallow sea levels."" " http://sharksqualene.com/ View in LinkedIn

SQUALENE ANNUAL DEMAND is some 1,000-2,000 tons. And it reportedly takes 3,000 deep sea shark livers to make a ton -- so 6 million per year for squalene, of the over 100 million total slaughtered annually. Amyris began selling Neosane Sqalene in 2010 made by Synbio, its first commercial product, with scale up in 2011 financed by the Brazilian Development Bank. " " http://lnkd.in/dakXcKX View in LinkedIn

RARE METALS BOTTLENECK. "Modern technology is too reliant on rare materials whose scarcity could drastically set back innovation, a new report has warned. It suggested that as more and more devices are manufactured, supplies of key elements, particularly metals, will be strained."" " http://lnkd.in/ddSrbPU View in LinkedIn