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No. 3369:

Tiny Living Factories

by Haleh Ardebili
Audio

Today, tiny living factories. The University of Houston presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them. 

Imagine we’re visiting a large factory. We see assembly lines, equipment, chemicals, products, and so on. Now imagine we’re suddenly shrunk to the size of a cell or microbe. We are now witnessing another type of factory - a living one. That’s right: cells and microbes behave as tiny factories that can make useful things for us. 

Some people may have heard of the term ‘biomanufacturing’. It means producing chemicals and materials using tiny living factories like cells, microbes, and enzymes. And what do we use them for? To answer this, let’s start from the very beginning...

Let’s go back thousands of years, when humans started making bread, cheese, wine, beer, yogurt, and more... They were all made through fermentation. In other words, microorganisms like bacteria and yeast turn carbohydrates like sugar or glucose into acid, alcohol, and gas. Scientists refer to this process as “ancient” or “pre-modern biomanufacturing”.

 

Figure 1. Ancient biomanufacturing: grape cultivation and winemaking in ancient Egypt c. 1500 BC.

 

With the arrival of the twentieth century, a new and exciting phase of biomanufacturing emerged. In 1928, a Scottish physician and microbiologist, Sir Alexander Fleming, made a remarkable discovery. He found that microbes could make medicine for us. In 1945, Fleming received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, which he shared with Howard Florey and Ernst Chain, "for the discovery of penicillin and its curative effect in various infectious diseases". 

 

Figure 2. Fleming in his laboratory in 1943

 

Biomanufacturing has evolved vastly over time. By using bacteria as cellular factories, we have succeeded in turning raw materials into drugs, insulin, and vaccines. But there is much more! We can now engineer and design the biomanufacturing process to produce many specialized chemicals - not only for food and medicine, but also for a wide range of applications, like biofuel, textiles, and plastics. This expanded capability is known as ‘industrial biomanufacturing’. 

 

Figure 3. A biomanufacturing facility including stainless steel bioreactors

 

Modern biomanufacturing is a fascinating and rapidly growing innovation of our time. Perhaps the most magical aspect is not the products we make, but the unlikely partnership between the very small and very large living beings. We have found a way to produce our food, medicine, energy, and much more, with the help of these tiny living partners. 

I’m Haleh Ardebili at the University of Houston, where we’re interested in the way inventive minds work. 

(Theme music)

Notes:

  1. Figure 1. Grape cultivation and winemaking in ancient Egypt c. 1500 BC. Grapes being trodden to extract the juice and made into wine in storage jars. Tomb of Nakht, Thebes, Ancient Egypt. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermentation_in_food_processing#/media/File:Tomb_of_Nakht_(13).jpg
  2. Figure 2. Fleming in his laboratory in 1943  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Fleming#/media/File:Professor_Alexander_Fleming_at_work_in_his_laboratory_at_St_Mary's_Hospital,_London,_during_the_Second_World_War._D17801.jpg
  3. Figure 3. Stainless Steel Bioreactors  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomanufacturing#/media/File:USP_DSP_Plant.jpg
  4. Yi-Heng Percival Zhang, Jibin Sun, Yanhe Ma, Biomanufacturing: history and perspective, Journal of Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology, Volume 44, Issue 4-5, 1 May 2017, Pages 773–784.    https://doi.org/10.1007/s10295-016-1863-2
  5. National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology, “Biomanufacturing 101”, April 2024   https://www.biotech.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/NSCEB_WP_Biomanufacturing.pdf
  6. Fermentation Products and Substrates   undefinedhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermentation#/media/File:The_most_common_substrates_and_products_of_fermentation.png
  7. Cheese  undefined  Blue Stilton cheese, showing the blue-green mold veins produced by Penicillium roqueforti  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillium_roqueforti#/media/File:Blue_Stilton_Penicillium.jpg
  8. Bacteria for Winemaking  undefined  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malolactic_fermentation#/media/File:O._oeni.jpg

This Episode first aired April 21, 2026.