What if we could make the building blocks of protein without growing a single crop? That's the question a team of German scientists is tackling—and the answer might reshape how we feed the world.
At the Technical University of Munich's campus in Straubing, researchers have developed a process that converts carbon dioxide into amino acids, the chemical bricks that build proteins in every living thing. The process starts with solar panels generating electricity, which splits water to create hydrogen. That hydrogen combines with captured CO₂ to make methanol, an industrial chemical. Specialized enzymes then transform the methanol step by step into amino acids.
"Plants use sunlight to build biomass, but they are relatively inefficient at doing so," said Volker Sieber, a professor of Chemistry of Biogenic Resources at TUM. "We are investigating an alternative pathway in which renewable energy is first converted into chemical energy carriers and then into valuable protein building blocks."
The team's latest work, published in the journal Nature Communications, demonstrates how this works for seven different amino acids: glycine, serine, L-aspartic acid, L-valine, L-glutamic acid, L-proline, and L-alanine. That's up from just one amino acid they produced in 2023, showing how quickly the technology is advancing.
Why does this matter? The United Nations projects that global food demand could jump by about 60 percent by 2050, while only about 2 percent more farmland is expected to become available. Dairy cows and other livestock already consume massive amounts of amino acids as feed supplements to produce milk and meat efficiently. Those amino acids typically come from crops like soy, which often require vast tracts of land and significant water to grow.
Viktoria Lehmann, a doctoral researcher on the project, explained it this way: "A dairy cow needs far more than the grass growing in its pasture. High milk yields require supplemental protein, which is typically supplied through animal feed. These feeds are enriched with amino acids."
The researchers see applications extending well beyond livestock feed. The same amino acids are key ingredients in the nutrient baths that help cultured meat grow. As cell-based meat production scales up, having a sustainable way to produce those nutrient inputs could become increasingly important.
The work is still at an early stage—production volumes remain too small for commercial use. But the team is focused on improving the enzymes that drive the conversion process, with the goal of scaling up eventually.
"Our work is primarily a proof of technological feasibility," Sieber said. "We have shown that a broad range of biologically relevant amino acids can be produced from CO₂-based methanol. This opens up new possibilities for the sustainable production of protein building blocks."