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Comment by blacksmith_tb | Hacker News Reader

Hmm, obviously cyanobacteria like Spirulina[1] "utilize CO2 captured from air" along with "water and some minerals" and sunlight to make sugars and proteins which people can eat. Not sure I'd describe that as 'fermentation' though if you do anything in a big vat it's a bioreactor and not just... a big vat, apparently.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirulina_(dietary_supplement)

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Also Spirulina in large doses is not kind to your stomach or your bathroom...

Also it stains things almost as badly as beet juice (but it is kind of dramatic to have a dark greenish bowl of oatmeal...)

Spirulina is a staple foodstuff in some places, is it plausible that the side effects you are suggesting are from someone not adjusted to eating it or contaminations from other cyanobacteria that are known to cause digestion issues?

This doesn’t use sunlight. It uses hydrogen gas as the energy carrier.

… Which makes knowing what microbe it’s using even more interesting. I mean, H2-eating microbes are quite common (and are likely how life started around seabed thermal vents), but making these things edible?

(Patent says it’s a strain of Xanthobacter.)

There's no reason they wouldn't be edible. Things are usually inedible because either they have some compound that's meant to be very durable (lignin in wood), they have evolved to be poisonous (many plants and fungi). A H2-eating microbe probably has no reason to evolve either property.

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