Reporting from the
Third Annual World Congress of Industrial Biotechnology
July 27, 2010 Dalian, China--
Last day of the conference and it started with an hour-long conversation over a breakfast of donuts, French fries and Coke (the extensive buffet selection for Westerners at the hotel) with Dr. David Gutnick.
Dr. Gutnick spoke at the keynote forum on opening day and is an honorable guest at the conference. He has taught for many years at Tel-Aviv University in Israel in the molecular microbiology and biotechnology departments. At the same time he is incredibly traveled, serving as a visiting professor at universities from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand (my home town) to MIT to Amsterdam. So why is he so acclaimed? Basically he is responsible for a number of scientific breakthroughs in the world of petroleum. He discovered how specific microbes could clean tanks aboard ships while at sea and later converted that technology to land. Simply, he found microbes that could clean up oily messes in a safe and natural way. Naturally you can imagine what one of my questions was to him – what are your thoughts on the Gulf of Mexico? He used the analogy of a city destroyed by an earthquake to describe how complicated and challenging rebuilding the ecosystem there would be. He said it will never be the same and there are so many different avenues of attack, none of which are an off-the-shelf idea. They all have to be tested in the field in small areas, then evaluated as successful. Only then, after millions of dollars of testing and scientific brainpower, can those ideas actually be implemented in a broader sense. He noted there’s also talk of dispersing the oil so it’s not so concentrated or breaking it up into small droplets but these ideas also have the consequence that fish and other wildlife can easily take up the oil every day it’s just in smaller parts and less visible to humans. One of the better ideas would be to use biochemicals to try to eat up the oil but this is hugely expensive and for the companies involved it has got to be a decision of cost effectiveness and speed. He was a very interesting and knowledgeable man, someone I will surely keep in touch with. He invited me to visit if I ever come to Tel-Aviv and I hope one day I have that opportunity.
After I ate with Dr. Gutnick I headed over to the conference, which was slowly wrapping up. The track I chose to attend today focused on plants for the future and covered everything from microalgae biorefining by a French expert to what Syngenta is doing in biotechnology by a Chinese expert.
Dr. Jean Jenck started the talk on microalgae biorefining. Microalgae (aka phytoplankton) is the oldest plant on earth at 3.7 billion years old. There is so much of it, it’s estimated to be half of the earth’s biomass. Mildly put, it’s an untapped resource. Dr. Jenck’s mission is to find an economical, effective and ethical way to harvest it and refine it for human use and energy. Microalgae has the advantage that it can multiple in a few hours in lab conditions, which for a plant is obviously very fast. It consumes carbon dioxide and produces oxygen while utilizing high concentrations of nitrate nutrients, all helpful for Dr. Jenck, but it’s still a really small industry with 12,000 tons of microalgae per year. They’re grown in part in greenhouse environments with the biggest being a 300ha pond in Israel. Right now Dr. Jenck says the technology is good enough to produce biodiesel, biofertilizer, animal food and human food (health foods, dietary drinks) and cosmetics, with experimentation under way for using it for everything from electricity to enzymes. He made a special point of saying his company is different, as most microalgae cultivation companies focus on fuel, but he said it’s important to also focus on other products, too, as microalgae has so much potential and it can be helpful to society in many different ways.
Another notable speaker was Tomas Vanek who spoke about plants for environment protection. How do you deal with waste and contaminated soil from waste depots, smelters etc.? He believes the answer lies with phytoremediation. This can be broken down into variety of processes, which are basically all multisyllabic words that start with ‘phyto’ and mean plants deal with contamination/pollution problems on behalf of humans. Dr. Vanek highlighted two of those processes in particular, one being phytoextraction. This is the uptake and translocation of contaminants in the soil by plant roots to the above ground portions of the plants. He’s also a fan of phytostabilization, which is the use of certain plant species to immobilize contaminants in the soil and ground water to reduce their bioavailability for entry into the food chain. Long words but interesting concepts. One example of phytoremediation working really well was at a uranium mill in the Czech Republic. The mill was built when the country was a part of the U.S.S.R. in the 50s and 60s. Thirty-six million tons of waste was left at the mill and not much care was taken in managing the waste as it was a military institution. Scientists have since planted water plants like cattail and blue rush at the mill with astounding results. Within 48 days of being planted the plants were able to drop the uranium concentration of the soil and water from 600ug/L to near 0ug/L. Impressive statistics. He believes more and more plants will be genetically modified for this purpose, although he did mention the ever present problem that the EU is not the biggest supporter of genetically modified plants or produce.
Talking about GMO in the EU, Jaroslava Oversna, from the Czech Republic’s Crop Research Institute, which helps produce biotech potatoes, flax, pea, barley and plums through to tobacco. The Czech Republic is one place in Europe not afraid to try biotech with a focus on quality (as opposed to quantity like many countries) and non-food end products.
After the conference ended I went into downtown Dalian to have a look around and there is one common denominator in China – people everywhere. This is not a place to come to relax but rather to people watch and soak in this fast-paced dynamic culture.
The culture is something that has always fascinated me. After watching the Beijing Olympics and meeting the occasional Chinese student at Mizzou or tourist in New Zealand, I was curious to see the country for myself. While I have really enjoyed my time here so far it was nothing close to what I expected. You routinely hear China is challenging the U.S.A. as a world superpower but the quality of life and level of poverty here is enormous. In a way it made the country quite endearing while also making me thankful for the small pleasures at home (like ice in drinks). Things that I think are beautiful and the logic I use to process ideas and problems are completely different, sometimes the polar opposite to what the Chinese think or would do. I’ve traveled through many countries but have never encountered such a different way of thinking; usually the main differences go no further than language. This has made my time here quite challenging as instructions and processes are more complex than the language barrier but in all a good lesson in patience. I will definitely be more sympathetic to Chinese tourists when they’re in my country! I want to say thank you to the United Soybean Board and Biotech University Project Manager Steve Veile for the opportunity, and good luck to Mizzou students who will soon partake on the same journey I have over the last year. Goodbye from China!
posted by Expert 7:34 am