6.6. Molecular Farming - Growing Whey 🐮 in Plants 🌱 with Miruku CEO Amos Palfreyman

What if you make a plant grow dairy proteins? A theme in this season is using new machines. New production hosts. But they are not made of steel or flesh and are all way smaller. This could be cells or fungi like yeast or bacteria used as machinery. So it becomes possible to produce certain ingredients more efficiently. Another machinery that is pretty well-known to humans is planted. We are used to extracting, for example, pigments, proteins, and oils from them. Plants naturally produce them. But what if plants could produce milk proteins? Or other fats? This is called molecular farming. Most likely, no way of conventional breeding will make a plant produce milk. You need genetic engineering. Genetic engineering means taking DNA from a different organism, in this case, a mammal. And inserting this DNA into a plant. This differs from Gene editing like CRISPR, where you only edit the existing DNA. You will hear from Amos Palfreyman, the co-founder and CEO of Miruku, a New Zealand startup. At first, you will hear how a biotech company realized it's a food company, then we cover the molecular farming technology and process and end with some thoughts on whether GMOs should be labeled. This is our biotech in food season. Let's jump right in. LINKS Check out our supporter of this season FoodLabs and their Climate Program: https://www.foodlabs.com/ Check out our supporter of this season ProVeg Incubator and their 12-month incubator program: https://provegincubator.com/ More info and links to resources on https://redtogreen.solutions/   For sponsorships, collaborations, volunteering, or feedback write Marina at [email protected] Please leave a review on iTunes https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/red-to-green-food-sustainability/id1511303510 Connect with Marina Schmidt https://www.linkedin.com/in/schmidt-marina/ Hashtags for this season Biotechnology in food What is biotechnology food Food biotechnology examples Food biotechnology startups Biotechnology food companies Biotech food in usa Food biotechnology examples Hashtags for this episode Molecular Farming Dairy alternatives Dairy replacements non-dairy milk animal-free dairy