Thirty years ago, China’s per capita GDP was only 2,300 yuan per person, ranking in the bottom 10% of nearly 200 countries in the world, and on the same starting line as a dozen of its brothers in the third world.
But today, our per capita GDP has reached 85,700 yuan per person, and we have become the top 30% of top students in the world.
These three decades of development have transformed us from a low-income country to an upper-middle-income country, and we are very likely to become a high-income country in the next ten years. This change directly determines that our development strategy has undergone earth-shaking changes.
In the past, our strategy was to want what developed countries did not want.
Developed countries cannot process so much waste, so we must import it for recycling.
Developed countries cannot accept highly polluting chemical companies, so we will vigorously develop the chemical industry.
Developed countries have high labor costs and cannot do labor-intensive work, so we will build large factories to do it.
But today, as the world’s second largest economy, we have reached the critical point between a middle-income country and a high-income country.
What you developed countries don’t want, sorry, we don’t want it now either.
What you developed countries want is great, and we want it now too.
Once you understand this, you can understand many of our policies and actions.
You can understand why starting from 2019, my country has transferred 16 types of solid waste, including waste plastics from industrial sources, into the “Catalogue of Prohibited Import of Solid Waste”, making the import of waste plastics a thing of the past.
We can understand why many regions have successively released rectification plans for the chemical industry and chemical companies in recent years. For example, Changzhou, Jiangsu Province, directly shut down 2,400 chemical companies in 2019.
We can understand why the country vigorously promotes the popularization of education and is committed to moving from demographic dividend to talent dividend.
So what do we want?
High-end industries, especially high-end manufacturing.
Previously, everyone’s focus has been on the chip and semiconductor fields. But in fact, competition in the field of biomanufacturing has intensified.
On May 10, 2022, the National Development and Reform Commission officially announced the “14th Five-Year Plan for Bioeconomy Development” and pointed out at the press conference that during this period of important strategic opportunities, bioeconomy development is closely related to the global biotechnology revolution and industrial transformation. The waves formed a major historic intersection. This plan marks the first five-year plan for my country’s bioeconomy field. It marks that the country attaches great importance to the development of life sciences and biotechnology and has made major strategic plans in top-level design.
On September 12, 2022, US President Biden signed an executive order aimed at promoting biotechnology production and research in the United States. The order reportedly aims to promote domestic manufacturing capabilities in the United States in industries such as pharmaceuticals, agriculture, plastics and energy. Previously, US media broke the news that Biden will sign this executive order to support the expansion of US bio-manufacturing capabilities. It is said that this measure is still aimed at China and is similar to the previous “Chip Act.”
On December 30, 2022, the Ministry of Commerce, the Ministry of Science and Technology and other departments revised the “China’s Catalog of Export Prohibited and Restricted Technologies” and publicly solicited public opinions. In this revision, “synthetic biology technology” was added as a restricted export technology, and other projects related to synthetic biology technology were further listed, including: “cell cloning and gene editing technology for humans”, ” CRISPR gene editing technology”, “genetic engineering (genes and vectors)” and “biotechnology drug production technology”, etc.
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On March 23, 2023, the U.S. White House government released a report titled “Clear Goals for U.S. Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing.” The 64-page report was jointly compiled by the U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Department of Commerce, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the U.S. National Science Foundation. It aims to establish new clear goals and priorities to advance the flourishing field of biotechnology and biomanufacturing in the United States. This move further demonstrates the importance the U.S. government attaches to the biotechnology and biomanufacturing industries and demonstrates its determination to promote the development of this field.
A contest concerning the fate of the country has begun.
Today we will talk about why biomanufacturing is the battle for national destiny in the next ten years.
China is the country with the largest manufacturing output value in the world, and its total manufacturing output value leads the world. Our manufacturing output far exceeds that of other countries, including the production of a wide range of goods, equipment and products.
However, as China’s economic development and per capita income level increase, a large number of high-pollution, high-emission, and low-value production capacity will be transferred, including a large number of chemical manufacturing companies.
But if there is no more competitive, sustainable, and high-value manufacturing industry, we will face the dilemma of hollowing out and fall into the middle-income trap. Biomanufacturing has become a potentially ideal alternative to chemical manufacturing.
What are the characteristics of chemical manufacturing?
Organic solvents, high temperature and high pressure, petrochemical raw materials, flammable and explosive.
What are the characteristics of biomanufacturing?
Aqueous phase reaction, normal temperature and pressure, biological raw materials, mild conditions.
Therefore, biomanufacturing has huge potential from a sustainable perspective.
At the same time, China has a very good industrial foundation for biomanufacturing. China is a veritable fermentation country.
According to public data, the output of my country’s main fermentation products reached 24.2 million tons in 2014, ranking first in the world.
For example, in terms of brewing, we are one of the largest brewing countries in the world, and our brewing output continues to lead the world.
We have numerous famous liquor brands such as liquor, beer, and rice wine. In terms of food fermentation, traditional fermented foods such as soy products, soy sauce, vinegar, tofu, etc. have a long history and are widely used in China.
So what is the relationship between fermentation and biomanufacturing?
Biomanufacturing is the use of principles and technologies of synthetic biology to produce specific compounds or products by designing, reorganizing and regulating the genome and metabolic network in organisms.
Biomanufacturing involves the modification and optimization of biomolecules, cells, and metabolic pathways within organisms to achieve efficient production of specific compounds.
Fermentation is a process that uses microorganisms (such as bacteria, yeast, etc.) to carry out metabolic reactions on organic matter under appropriate conditions. Through fermentation, various useful products can be produced, such as alcohol, acetic acid, lactic acid, antibiotics, enzymes, etc.
As a vivid metaphor, biomanufacturing is like using flour to make various delicious breads or cakes during the baking process, and fermentation is an important step in baking to allow the flour to expand and ferment.
Therefore, fermentation is an important part of biomanufacturing, and our developed fermentation industry has laid a solid foundation for biomanufacturing.
The synthetic biology mentioned earlier has become the “soul” of the biological manufacturing process.
Synthetic biology can use gene editing and recombination technology to specifically optimize metabolic pathways in organisms, allowing organisms to synthesize target products more efficiently. By modifying the metabolic pathways and genomes of microorganisms, their conversion rate and yield can be significantly improved.
At the same time, synthetic biology can help design and construct new organisms or microorganisms that can achieve specific production tasks. Through synthetic biology technology, organisms that do not exist in nature can be created, allowing for targeted and customized biofabrication.
In addition, with the development of technology in recent years, synthetic biology technology can achieve high-throughput screening, that is, rapid testing of a large number of microorganisms or cell lines in a short period of time to find the optimal product production combination. This saves time and costs and quickly finds the most efficient production strategy.
Returning to the previous analogy, the role of synthetic biology in biomanufacturing can be likened to the key role of flour in baking.
In baking, we can add other raw materials to flour, such as water, yeast, sugar, etc., and through appropriate operations and conditions, the flour will ferment and swell, and finally make delicious bread or cakes.
Similarly, in biomanufacturing, synthetic biology provides a series of technologies and methods, such as gene editing, gene synthesis, regulatory element design, etc., allowing microorganisms or cells to achieve the synthesis and production of specific products.
In the past few decades, Chinese scientists have achieved many important research results and application progress in the field of synthetic biology, becoming important participants and promoters of global synthetic biology.
For example, researcher Ma Yanhe from the Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, led a team to achieve the de novo synthesis of carbon dioxide into starch for the first time. The research results were published in the top international academic journal “Science” and were considered by the international academic community to be a major impact on the world. Disruptive technology.
For another example, my mentor, Professor Chen Guoqiang, director of the Center for Synthetic and Systems Biology at Tsinghua University, led a team to screen the highly adaptable industrial microbial strain Halomonas, achieving a breakthrough in key core technologies in the biomanufacturing industry and becoming the first Scholars from mainland China who won the International Metabolic Engineering Award.
Therefore, with a large number of technological breakthroughs in synthetic biology in the upstream and a solid industrial foundation in the fermentation field in the downstream, biomanufacturing will burst out with huge potential energy and is very likely to reshape our current industrial structure and achieve a qualitative leap in the next ten years.
In addition to the industrial side, biomanufactured products also have huge market opportunities.
McKinsey estimates that between 2030 and 2040, synthetic biology technology will bring direct economic benefits of US$2-4 trillion to the world every year.
And many bio-manufactured products have also emerged. Let’s take the polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) that I am most familiar with as an example.
PHA is the general name for a large class of biodegradable polymers and is a type of bioplastic. However, compared with traditional plastics, which are usually produced from limited petroleum resources, PHA is produced from biomass raw materials through biomanufacturing, including glucose, palm oil, straw hydrolyzate and even kitchen processing products. etc., more green, environmentally friendly and sustainable.
In addition, unlike traditional plastics, PHA can degrade under natural conditions, including soil and oceans. This helps reduce plastic pollution and negative impacts on the environment, especially in the oceans and soil.
Moreover, when traditional plastics gradually break down in the environment, they form tiny particles or fibers, known as microplastics. These microplastics may enter water sources, soil and food chains, causing negative impacts on the environment and organisms, and may also pose a potential threat to human health. Since PHA is a biodegradable plastic, once it enters the natural environment, microorganisms can decompose them, so products made from PHA will not produce microplastics that are harmful to the human body.
In terms of functionality, PHAs are compatible with the human body and other organisms in many aspects, which makes them have a wide range of potential applications in the medical field.
For example, the hard materials PHB and PHBV in the PHA family are suitable for bone tissue engineering, such as articular cartilage, fibrocartilage repair, etc. Since most PHA materials have the function of inducing regeneration, these materials can also promote new bone formation to a certain extent after implantation.
Another example is that some tough materials, such as PHBHHx, P4HB, PHO, etc. in the PHA family, are more suitable in the fields of cardiac surgery, cardiovascular and neurosurgery. Tricuspid heart valve stents based on PHA materials such as P4HB and poly-3-hydroxyhexanoic acid octanoate [P(3HHx-co-3HO)] have achieved good results in animal experiments.
In addition to PHA, many biomanufacturing products have also emerged, such as proteinase K used in the extraction step of nucleic acid detection, L-alanine used in medicine and food, and hyaluronic acid used in skin care products. , bio-based nylon used in the clothing field, RNA nanomedicines used in the agricultural field, human milk oligosaccharides used in infant formula, and so on.
With the unremitting efforts of the entire biomanufacturing industry, the trillion-dollar biomanufacturing product market has gradually matured and is unstoppable.
Biomanufacturing is a battle for national destiny in the next decade.
Biomanufacturing is expected to replace traditional chemical production methods, reduce dependence on limited resources, reduce environmental pollution, and achieve sustainable development. In the context of
limited resources and increasingly prominent environmental issues, biomanufacturing technology is particularly important.
At the same time, with the advancement and application of biotechnology, biomanufacturing can promote innovation in new drugs, new materials, new energy and other fields. Biomanufacturing will collaboratively drive the development of many industrial chains and become a huge economic growth point.