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Comment by moffkalast | Hacker News Reader

Analogy aside, just because the process has been evolutionarily optimized it doesn't mean it's the most efficient way of doing it. There's a lot of other evolutionary pressure where energy is expended in ways that don't benefit obtaining the arbitrary end product.

Say synthetic wood as your example, I would be willing to bet that a dedicated system that extracts CO2 for the carbon and combines it with water to make cellulose could be made more efficient than any type of photosynthesis. You can sell carbon credits and oxygen on top of that too.

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If it was evolutionarily optimized, it most likely is not the most efficient way of doing something but it most certainly is the most resilient way.

Potato blight? soon to be available for: meat!

Is a fungal disease that ravages crop organisms grown in the open (wild varieties included) supposed to be an argument against growing food in a sterile, controlled environment?

The source of potato blight is from the genetic similarity of the potatoes grown, as potatoes clone themselves when grown from potato seed (small potatoes) rather than "true" potato seeds, from their flowers. They are naturally selected, then naturally cloned en masse.

Lab grown meat will have the same problem assuming the cells have little to no genetic diversity. Even if grown in a sterile environment, they could become susceptible to a blight-like organism (virus, bacteria, fungus, etc) once on grocery store shelves.

> Lab grown meat will have the same problem assuming the cells have little to no genetic diversity.

I know it isn't on quite the same scale as literally cloning the cells, but livestock isn't a very deep gene pool. Lots of selective breeding, by the same mindset that gave european nobility weak chins.

I agree. Lab grown meat seems like a further step towards the preexisting industrialization of meat.

Removing the sentience from cows does reduce animal suffering, though I wonder if other things couldn't be done to preserve genetic diversity. Like maybe breeding oysters without ganglia, as they are barely alive to begin with. Farmed oysters are also better for the environment than wild ones.

Ah... You should look into the sets of processes around livestock family lineage tracking. Farmers have to swap out large parts of their herds over time to prevent inbreeding. All part and parcel of what you sign up for in Agriculture.

> it most likely is not the most efficient way of doing something but it most certainly is the most resilient way

For that purpose. Photosynthesis is horribly inefficient for any use other than making more plant.

What do you mean? Does a more efficient way of biologically using sun's energy exist?

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