Near future
Contact us
  • Home
  • Tech
  • Health
  • Environment
  • Architecture
  • energia
  • Transportation
  • Spazio
  • AI
  • concepts
  • Gadgets
  • Italy Next
  • H+
July 2 2022

Coronavirus / Russia-Ukraine

Near future

News to understand, anticipate, improve the future.

No Result
View All Result

News to understand, anticipate, improve the future.

Read in:  Chinese (Simplified)EnglishFrenchGermanItalianJapanesePortugueseRussianSpanish

We will grow wood in the laboratory without cutting down trees

An MIT experiment showed the possibility of transforming plant cells to create wood in the laboratory: the potential is immense.

Gianluca Ricciodi Gianluca Riccio
in Environment, Technology
Share449Pin103Tweet281SendShare79ShareShare56
Wood grown in the laboratory
May 27, 2022
⚪ Reads in 4 minutes
A A

Wood is everywhere. Anywhere, really. Even in the offices of associations against deforestation: a global market worth 630 billion euros in 2021 alone. it will exceed € 900 billion in just 4 years. Okay, we all agree: reforestation alone will not help us heal all human damage, but do we really have to cut down every tree on the planet before we understand that we are killing ourselves?

A new solution promises an end to this vicious circle. What if we could "grow" wood with cellular agriculture, and use cultivated wood instead of cutting down trees? MIT confirmed this possibility, developing a technique that produces wood of any shape and size in the laboratory.

How did they do it?

Wood grown in the laboratory
An outline taken from the MIT research

In essence, MIT scientists have managed to give normal plant cells the same properties as stem cells. They extracted cells from the leaves of a flowering plant called Zinnia elegans, and then they kept them in liquid for a couple of days. In the next step, the researchers "enriched" these plant cells with nutrients and hormones.   

Maybe you are also interested

Carlsberg tests wood fiber beer bottles. Better than glass? Mmm

The future of wind towers? It could be wood

HexBix: wood and cocoa waste, the soundproofing you don't expect

Lab-grown leather also arrives

After a while, these plant cells produced new plant cells. By modulating the dosage of hormones, the researchers also modulated the physical and mechanical characteristics of the newly grown cells. Higher levels of hormones, stiffer material.

According to the researcher Ashley Beckwith, who led the research, simply altering tiny amounts of these chemicals is enough to bring about significant changes in terms of physical results.

It goes to print: and without waste

Beckwith and her team were also able to 3D print custom designed structures from cultured plant cells, using a 3D bioprinting method. The experiment was conducted for three months, keeping the plant material produced in the laboratory in "incubation" in the dark. The cultivated wood stunned the researchers: not only did it survive, but it also is grown at twice the rate of a normal tree.

Excellent news also against waste, if you take into account that the processing of wooden furniture involves a loss of about 30% of the wood used. The bioprinting technique used at MIT does not generate any waste. Zero. No subtractive operations: in the future we could choose the shape of a chair, print it and stop. Not a single chip more.

Wood grown in the laboratory
Too much waste in woodworking

When is the wood "grown" in the laboratory?

For now at MIT they have managed to show that this plant material can be grown in the laboratory and that its mechanical properties can be changed, but the research is still in its infancy. More studies and tests will be needed before the technique can be improved and used to "grow and print" the first furniture.

I can't wait for it to happen: every year we cut down 15 billion trees. Fifteen billion.

Each year, humans cull about 15 billion trees. A catastrophe that triggers a thousand problems related to climate change. If successful, this MIT "cultivated wood" will help us get rid of deforestation. Forever.

tags: cellular agricultureWoodMIT
Previous post

Genome of a dead man in ancient Pompeii sequenced

Next Post

Job interviews of the future, how to hit the mark starting from the dress code

COLLABORATE

To submit articles, disclose the results of a research or scientific discoveries write to the editorial staff

    archive

    Have a look here:

    black and white short fur cat
    Medicine

    Denmark, coronavirus mutation from mink to man: kill them all

    A new coronavirus mutation is spreading from mink to humans in Denmark. It can compromise the development of vaccines against ...

    Read More
    future sport

    How COVID-19 is disrupting and transforming the future of sport

    droplet, mini camper

    Droplet, the drip mini camper that has everything inside

    Out Of Electra electronic mask

    Out Of, the Italian startup is sold out with the photovoltaic ski mask

    Alpha DaRT, extraordinary anti-cancer radiotherapy to alpha particles

    Alpha DaRT, extraordinary anti-cancer radiotherapy to alpha particles

    The daily tomorrow

    Futuroprossimo.it provides news on the future of technology, science and innovation: if there is something that is about to arrive, here it has already arrived. FuturoProssimo is part of the network ForwardTo, studies and skills for future scenarios.

    Subscribe to our newsletter

    Environment
    Architecture
    Artificial intelligence
    Gadgets
    concepts
    Design

    Staff
    Archives
    Advertising
    Privacy Policy

    Medicine
    Spazio
    Robotica
    Work
    Transportation
    energia

    To contact the FuturoProssimo editorial team, write to [email protected]

    Chinese Version
    Édition Française
    Deutsche Ausgabe
    Japanese version
    English Edition
    Edição Portuguesa
    Русское издание
    Spanish edition

    This work is distributed under license Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.
    © 2021 Futuroprossimo

    No Result
    View All Result
    • Home
    • Tech
    • Health
    • Environment
    • Architecture
    • energia
    • Transportation
    • Spazio
    • AI
    • concepts
    • Gadgets
    • Italy Next
    • H+