Yeast instead of leather? The field of fabrics sets off a biological revolution

Natley, USA – In a huge corporate campus on the outskirts of New York, modern Meadow employees are experimenting with great modern alchemy in a messy lab: turning a bucket of color, consistency, and chicken soup into a liquid Luxury leather.

This sugary viscous liquid is a yeast food. This yeast has been genetically engineered to produce collagen, which is a major component of animal skin such as calfskin and crocodile skin. Modern Meadow's goal is to produce collagen on a large scale and figure out how to turn it into a processable material. The startup, which has been in existence for seven years, believes that if it succeeds, then the fabric it produces is the most important invention since spandex : laboratory-grown leather.

The market size of the apparel industry is as high as 2.4 trillion US dollars. Some people in the industry are eager to realize the cultivation of leather, fur and silk in the laboratory as soon as possible, so that people do not need to obtain these things from living animals. For thousands of years, humans have been using animal products to make clothes and shoes. The earliest tannery tools date back to the Paleolithic era. Today, humans spend tens of billions of dollars a year on clothing, accessories and shoes made of leather, fur and silk.

However, the use of these materials has been increasingly controversial. Cattle raising will increase climate change and require a lot of land and water, and the number of these two resources is decreasing every year. It has been predicted that global beef consumption has reached its limit, which may allow ranchers to selectively slaughter a portion of their livestock, thereby leaving the fashion industry with a source of lost cowhide. Hermès, Chanel and other luxury brands have acquired the tanneries, in order to ensure future access to sufficient high quality material.

At the same time, brands such as Gucci, Versace and Michael Kors have stopped using fur because of the growing demand for damage to animal welfare. Moreover, analysts predict that young consumers in Western countries will generally reduce the purchase of products made from animals. Companies based on the leather processing technology that have been perfected decades ago are worried that their market share will be snatched away by opponents who are developing new fabrics that have already produced jackets made of breathable, sweat-absorbent synthetic fabrics. And yoga pants, as well as ultra-light shoes that enhance athletic performance.

Several startups are trying to solve these problems with bioengineering technology. Modern Meadow has dozens of patents and has invested more than $50 million to develop laboratory-trained leather. Bolt Threads in Emeryville, Calif., connected via the Bay Bridge to San Francisco, has raised more than $200 million to renovate yeast to produce spider silk protein. In September, the company officially launched a bag made of leather-like materials made from the roots of mushrooms. Also located in San Francisco, VitroLabs is using stem cells to cultivate a leather that is no different from animal leather. The company's co-founder and president, Ingvar Helgason, said the company is expected to launch a product made from this leather next year.

Today, the fashion industry giants are beginning to support this technology. Nike obtained a patent last year because it invented a technology that added laboratory-grown leather to shoes and other products. Adidas is working with AMSilk, based in Munich, to develop a biodegradable sneaker. This shoe uses a spider-like material that can be woven, sprayed, or gelatinized. Brands Patagonia and Stella McCartney have established partnerships with Bolt Threads. Companies such as Kering and PVH support an incubator that is dedicated to helping startups develop alternatives to animal leather using non-traditional raw materials such as apples and yeast.

Chief Development Officer sustainable Kering of Marie-Claire Daveu said that investment in alternative fabrics and other disruptive product innovation is the core of the company's environmental goals (Kering plan in 2025 to reduce the company's environmental footprint by 40%). But she also said that laboratory-trained leather may take another 10 years to be used in products sold by Kering's brands. She added that the technology has just emerged and it is difficult to predict its development.

However, she believes that after the production technology is mature, the leather cultured in the laboratory is not for sale. “Consumers are increasingly looking for sustainable and zero-crown fabrics. If there is a new fabric on the market that has both excellent properties and benefits for the planet and humans, it will certainly be favored by consumers,” she said.

So far, the leather that the fashion industry is looking forward to can only be produced in the lab's barrels, just like Modern Meadow's facilities in New Jersey. The company believes that its technology will go through the same development process as synthetic fabrics. Synthetic fabrics first appeared in the early 20th century and became popular in the next few decades. At the beginning of the 21st century, polyester exceeded cotton and became the most widely used fabric. Today, synthetic fabrics have been perfectly integrated into suits, socks and other clothing.

Andras Forgacs, co-founder and president of Modern Meadow, said: "In the next few years, we will be fully committed to improving technology and researching how to mass produce, and then bringing products to market with our partners. It’s not a job that can be done overnight."

Whether the fabrics grown in the laboratory are spider silk or crocodile skin, the basic steps are similar. The first is to edit the yeast's DNA so that the yeast can make collagen during fermentation. Then put the yeast in a nutrient-rich liquid and stir it vigorously to form proteins inside the yeast cells. Finally, the protein is extracted from the cells to make the fabric. As long as the way to transform DNA is correct, it is not difficult to start an efficient protein factory.

VitroLabs uses another technology. The company uses animal cells to obtain stem cells and then controls the differentiation process of stem cells to form the skin. Bolt Threads grows the roots of mushrooms called mycelium on trays until they can be used to make leather-like materials.

As early as a few decades ago, many of the technologies used in these production processes have emerged. But they are too difficult to use and too expensive, so they have been used primarily by the pharmaceutical industry for a long time. But in the past decade, the cost of using these technologies has fallen dramatically, and now even startups looking for the fashion industry can afford to edit and splicing DNA.

Modern Meadow tests about 1,000 genetically engineered yeasts every week, of which only 1% to 2% have the value of entering the fermentation stage. Only a small portion of these fermented stages can be put into production. Now, the yeast cultivated by the company can produce 20 times more protein than it did two years ago. Bolt Threads first produced microsilk in 2010, but seven years later it produced enough microsilk to launch its first product: a tie, quantity There are only 50, and a tie is priced at $314. Dan Widmaier, co-founder and president of Bolt Threads, said that although the price looks high, it took tens of millions of dollars to build the artificial spider silk needed to make such a tie in the lab 10 years ago. .

The goal of most startups is not to invent a perfect fabric, but to create a platform that can release a variety of materials. Widmaier said that Bolt Threads launched a second product this year, a fabric similar to felt, and the company believes that it can develop new materials from scratch in a year. VitroLabs' technology for producing animal skin in a laboratory environment is mature, and it is believed that the company can use a stem cell associated with hair growth to make fur.

“Ultimately, we will produce materials other than fabrics like silk, wool fabrics and nylon. In theory, we are able to produce any type of material. This technology is moving forward at an increasing rate,” Widmaier said.

The most critical step in this type of technology is to organize the protein into a structure similar to leather or silk – even completely different from the structure of existing materials. Modern Meadow did not imitate the leather already on the market, but was experimenting with a new material . This material can flow like water or spray onto other fabrics to form a shiny, thin layer. VitroLabs is developing a crocodile skin that can be customized to create a custom pattern, such as the logo of a company. AMSilk has developed an extremely high-strength material to replace the petroleum-derived fabrics used in shoes. After the material becomes a gel state, it can also replace the silk used in cosmetics.