Scientists Want to Save Trees With Lab-Grown Furniture

[Judi Lynn]

‘Wood-like’ fibers grown in custom shapes could reduce the strain on our forests

Stephen Moore
1 hour ago·5 min read

To make a product from wood, you need to cut down trees. Collectively, we cut down lots of them. Around 900 million are felled annually around the world — about 2.5 million per day. In the United States, around 40% are used for timber products and wood, which forms many of the furniture pieces around your home. Ikea alone uses 1% of all the world’s commercially harvested wood. To put it into perspective, the company works through 600 tons of particle board every day (a material made from wood scraps) in the production of just one of its products — the famous Billy bookcase.

Only 8% of the world’s forest is properly protected from destruction, leaving the rest open to unsustainable (or even illegal) harvesting. Unsustainable wood has a huge impact on the areas where it’s felled, leading to human rights abuses, the endangerment of species, and even threats to the lives of Indigenous tribes who call the land home. It unbalances the finely tuned natural systems of the world, increasing the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and warms our planet — expected to be two degrees warmer by 2050 at the current rate — while also resulting in the mass extinction of hundreds of animal species and ecosystems.
But one group is turning to science in a bid to avoid using trees for wood altogether. If successful, it would help alleviate some of the strain on the planet. MIT researchers have recently developed a way to grow wood-like fibers in a lab, without soil or sunlight, opening the door for the possibility of lab-grown furniture.

On January 20, a research team led by PhD student Ashley Beckwith announced that they had successfully grown plant tissue that had “wood-like” fibers in a laboratory setting, without the presence of soil or sunlight. Their paper will be published in the Journal of Cleaner Production.

The process began by extracting cells from the leaves of a zinnia plant, then culturing them in a dish. These cells were transferred into a gel that served as a scaffold, or mold, for the growing wood. The researchers then added two plant hormones, auxin and cytokinin, and controlled the levels of both to manipulate the cells, causing them to produce an organic polymer called lignin. As lignin was produced, the cells grew, becoming a rigid “wood-like” structure. Lignin is naturally present in plant cells, especially those that make up wood and bark.

More:
https://futurehuman.medium.com/scientists-want-to-save-trees-with-lab-grown-furniture-66967631bd32

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