Growing wood

[Zolar V]

Just a thought i just had, But could we coax possibly synthesized microorganisms, such as bacteria, to grow literally slabs of wood?

 

instead of trees being the main source for wood, we could grow it, pre-shaped, in vats.

 

so the above question begs another question, what is wood chemically?

[ewmon]

The main structural component of wood is cellulose, which is a polysaccharide (a polymer of sugars). Some bacteria, such as Streptococcus pneumoniae, produce polysaccharides, but producing solid fuels using bacteria seems inefficient. Algae might be used to convert solar energy directly into a solid fuel.

[Zolar V]

I was reading up on the chemical makeup of wood, and it appears to be comprised of 3 main things:

cellulose comprising of around 40-50%

hemicellulose 15%-20%

lignin 15% – 30%

 

these three components are suspended and intertwined within each other in some pretty specific patters. So i think 3 or 4 different types of bacteria could be used in creating a patter of the components to be similar to wood.

 

Reference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood

[Moontanman]

I have my doubts about this Zolar, much like cellulose slurry, paper, fiber board, chip board, plywood, and oak planks can all be made from a tree, I don't see taking loose cellulose slurry and making an oak plank. I think the tree will make the wood far better and efficiently than we can by starting with a loose slurry.... It just seems like a up hill battle for sure, maybe wood working has tainted my view point on this...

[Zolar V]

well, sooner or later we are going to have problems with our wood reserves (albeit many many many years from now). the root of the problem is human population (less land for wood to grow) and human consumption. so why not start on that problem now?

lets just make an easily producible wood wood supply that is grown into the forms we need it. You could use and manipulate the bacteria to make particular structures within the wood to make it stronger and more resilient in whatever shape you would like it to become. Being able to just grow the wood into a "2 by 4" would save on the energy requirements to both cut the lumber, haul it from its original place to a lumber mill, then to the average store, THEN to the consumer. you could just grow it, and ship it.

seems like it could be saving quite a bit of energy.

[Moontanman]

You might be correct, i think it will be a long time before growing pine trees on tree farms is replaced that way...

[Mr Skeptic]

Wood has a structure to it, which essentially requires multicellularity to accomplish. In any case, trees have the advantage of doing photosynthesis themselves, so that they function as solar powered wood factories. I do like your idea of improving the shapes (well for our purposes anyways). If bacteria were used, I think there is a stronger structure that could be made instead of wood. Consider that wood once had to function for water transport, so might not be the very best at structural support.

[Zolar V]

Exactly, we could design the internal structure of the wood to fit our architectural needs. However i was also thinking along your lines as well, in that maybe if we were to try we would never achieve the efficiency of a tree growing wood.

all in all it seems like this may be a good idea to delve into.

 

imo if i had a lab i would definately attempt this.

[Mr Skeptic]

imo if i had a lab i would definately attempt this.

 

In my opinion if you had a lab you would have a much better understanding of exactly how difficult what you are proposing is.

[zapatos]

We already have a method to easily produce a wood supply; planting trees. Seems to me the primary advantage to developing a method to create wood in the desired forms, is that we can do away with saws. Not sure it would be worth the effort.

[Moontanman]

I like Zolar's idea, i know that the way a tree grows and it grows to fit it's environment, has alot to do with how its' structured. Different trees are so different from each other in some cases it's almost difficult to see how they are all the same type of organism. The pines grown here on tree farms are relatively soft, easy to process into everything from paper to dimensional lumber.

 

Some trees are much harder than pines, oak comes to mind but a local blooming tree/shrub has the hardest strongest heaviest wood I know of. Some wood never floats no matter how dry it gets, other wood floats like cork when it's still green and full of sap.

 

The point here that trees are about as hard and strong as they can be, making wood from bacteria would entail a huge effort, making the tubes that transport water, which by the way is one reason why wood is strong, making these tubes would be very difficult I am sure but trees make them as part of their structure automatically.

 

I can see the possibility of using carbon micro tubes to make the cellulose slurry strong and use the cellulose to support the carbon tubes. i am sure there are many way sit can be done but every time I ride any where here I see thousands of acres of trees all in perfect straight rows on land that is not useful for any other purpose.

 

 

I am an advocate of using plants to grow things like meat fruits or other useful things, sadly we do not seem to be very close to manipulating other life forms this way any time soon.

[Zolar V]

I think im with you one that growing meat idea, though mine is more of growing slabs of meat in more of a lab environment rather than growing meat on plants.

[Moontanman]

I think im with you one that growing meat idea, though mine is more of growing slabs of meat in more of a lab environment rather than growing meat on plants.

 

That's not a bad idea but for me the idea of a plant that has fruit that contains meat is more elegant Break open a coconut like fruit and inside is a large chunk of a specific meat, it could hang on the plant until harvested and have a long shelf life as well... Well at least in my mind...

[Mr Skeptic]

I think im with you one that growing meat idea, though mine is more of growing slabs of meat in more of a lab environment rather than growing meat on plants.

 

And what would be the source for the energy and molecules necessary for this? Plants are nice because they use solar power, plus they self-repair and self-replicate.

[Zolar V]

And what would be the source for the energy and molecules necessary for this? Plants are nice because they use solar power, plus they self-repair and self-replicate.

 

Wonderful question! I thought about this particular aspect myself, but i do not have the required knowledge of microbiology to properly put forth a viable answer. However i will attempt to suggest what we could do.

The bacteria would use the energy gained in splitting chemical bonds between something carbon/oxygen/hydrogen. the slury that they will be in may be something like water (HOH) and ash(carbon stuff) OR you could use the bacteria to sequester the carbon out of the atmosphere, you could also have them use photosynthesis. Where they get energy is debateable depending on just how you engineer the bacterium.

[Pantaz]

Faster growing trees are being developed, such as Lyptus:

Lyptus is the trade name of a wood made from a hybrid of two species of Eucalyptus tree, Eucalyptus grandis and Eucalyptus urophylla. Developed for quick harvesting, and grown on plantations in Brazil, Lyptus is marketed as an environmentally friendly alternative to oak, cherry, mahogany, and other wood products that may be harvested from old growth forests. Lyptus trees can be harvested for lumber in approximately 15 years, much sooner than woods from cooler climates.

[Blahah]

GM is a much more likely source of future refinements to wood production. If we want to strengthen wood by enforcing less variability in cell length, higher lignin content etc. then engineering new or existing tree species is the way to achieve that. Growing wood bacterially is not feasible. Mainly because wood derives its structure from cells - it is the very fact of multicellularity that allows wood to exist.

 

However, growing meat substitutes via microorganisms is entirely feasible and being actively researched. We already have a major food product produced in this way: Quorn. It's mycoprotein grown in continuous culture fermentation of the fungus Fusarium venenatum. In answer to Mr Skeptic's question about where the energy and nutrients come from, a basic input of water, heat and simple sugars plus a mineral mixture is required - the fungus then synthesizes the other required components itself.