In a groundbreaking achievement, the team led by Ma Yanhe at the Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has successfully synthesized starch from carbon dioxide for the first time. Their findings were published in the journal "Science" on September 24.

Using high-concentration CO2 emitted during industrial production as the raw material, the team employed high-density electric/hydrogen energy and chemical catalysts to reduce CO2 to methanol. They then designed and constructed a novel recombinant enzyme to catalyze the polymerization of methanol into tricarbon compounds, further aggregating into hexacarbon compounds, and ultimately assembling into linear/branched starch, creating artificial starch identical to natural starch composition.

In laboratory experiments, this synthetic pathway can convert CO2 to starch at a rate of 22 nanomoles per minute per milligram, which is 8.5 times faster than the rate at which corn synthesizes starch through photosynthesis in natural environments. The energy efficiency is 3.5 times higher than that of corn.

Under sufficient energy supply conditions, based on current technical parameters, a bioreactor with a volume of 1 cubic meter can produce starch equivalent to 5 mu of corn fields in China annually.

The synthesis of starch from CO2 provides a new approach for China's carbon-neutral pathway by utilizing new energy technologies to achieve the resource utilization of CO2.