Hacker News Reader

Comment by bsdz | Hacker News Reader

In the UK a popular plant based "meat" is Quorn. I believe that is grown by an organism that is fed glucose. The glucose is predigested maize starch. So perhaps not a single organism but two to make it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusarium_venenatum

View on HN

You still need a nitrogen source. They are using the glucose energy to turn nitrogen (ammonia in this case) into protein.

I'm not sure I agree with your wording, ie use "glucose energy to turn nitrogen into protein". Proteins are made up of amino acids which are made from carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen atoms. The glucose not only provides energy to the process but also carbon, oxygen and nitrogen. In fact, this is a very common process in plants.

Note: The comment I originally responded to appears to have changed their wording from "living organism" to animal. Although curiously this might not be correct either. For example, humans synthesize some “nonessential amino acids” from glucose (eg glucose → pyruvate → alanine). It's possible similar amino acid pathways can be combined into a protein completely synthesized by the human body. It also seems very likely that this happens in other animals.

https://www.quora.com/Can-the-human-body-turn-excess-glucose...

I made a typo above when I said glucose provides nitrogen that should be hydrogen.

Sure it's an oversimplification, I excluded everything else glucose provides besides energy, but glucose alone cannot produce protein.

Nitrogen source is rarely the most expensive BOM component for cell culture/fermentation, so it's all kind of moot.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com