Making Beauty Products From Thin Air
What if it was possible to make something out of thin air?
It was this question which started the sustainability journey of scientist Dr Tiago Selão.
Written By Ariyana Rayatt
How can skin care reduce waste?
Dr Selão works at 17Cicada, a biotechnology company, which uses waste streams to make useful compounds. Among the environmental problems we face is the rising concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The greenhouse gas has contributed to global warming and subsequently, climate change.
It was this problem which brought Dr Selão to consider the use of carbon dioxide to make hyaluronic acid at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore. Hyaluronic acid is a compound used in the beauty and medical industry. At NTU his work involved using carbon dioxide from the air and modified microorganisms to make this well known beauty compound. Dr Selão’s journey of sustainably producing hyaluronic acid has continued at 17Cicada.
Usually, hyaluronic acid is produced from one of two sources (1), from rooster tissues or (2), from genetically modified bacteria fed sugar. Using roosters comes with ethical concerns of animal welfare and biosafety concerns of impurities of other animal-derived molecules that can find their way into the final product.
The latter method is similar to the process Dr Selão is working on, but the big difference is that, at 17Cicada, they feed their microorganisms a waste product rather than sugar. Their microorganism then acts as a catalyst, converting the waste to hyaluronic acid. When compared to the two typical methods used for hyaluronic acid production, this process is better for both the animals and the environment.
A zero waste future
Dr Selão described the goal as being a net zero waste world, in which a waste stream could be reused as a starting material for another process. This circular economy would minimise the waste of any resources. As with many ideas, this is not an original concept. All credit can be given to the original circular economy – nature.
How can we harness the cyclical ecosystems of nature and adapt them to produce useful resources? – Enter, Biotechnology.
How biotechnology is a tool for a zero waste future
For a microorganism to produce a compound it would not usually produce, it must be genetically modified.
How do you do this? Using 17Cicada’s vision, you would begin with your waste stream, this will be your input (or feedstock) for your microorganism. The next step is finding a microorganism that can grow well on your feedstock.
It is at this point where the big challenge begins and you need to answer the question: “Can I engineer it [the microorganism] to produce something that I want?”. To engineer an organism genetically means you are changing the DNA(, nature’s instruction manual). By adding or taking away DNA you can alter the organism’s cellular systems to produce a compound (in the case of 17Cicada, hyaluronic acid). This is the tricky stage, Dr Selão explains “I have encountered bacteria that can grow nicely on the particular feedstock we’re trying, but then they are very, very hard to engineer.”
After completion of this stage, you then need to grow the microorganism at scale and purify your product, so you can sell your product at a reasonable price.
The grand scheme
It is no secret that we are facing environmental challenges. And it’s these challenges that have spurred the movement of creative solutions across industries, not only in biotechnology. “We have to always remember the bigger picture.” Dr Selão noted, “ We are part of a whole grand scheme of things and we have to work together with everybody else.”
The development of machine learning, AI and robotics and how they can be integrated into the lab, will drive forward projects like those at 17Cicada at a faster rate, streamlining processes and reducing costs. Beyond the biotechnology lab, it will be interdependent relationships between industries and their wastes that will create a circular economy, reducing the planet’s dependency on oil-derived products to strive towards a zero-waste society.
But as Dr Selão pointed out “the world doesn’t need saving. It’s us that need to save ourselves. The world will keep existing with or without us”, and instead we should consider “what world we want our children and their descendants to inherit from us.”
