Solar Isn’t New
Solar energy is a key component of humanity’s shift towards “green” energy, but plants are way ahead of us. They have been getting all their energy from the sun for around five hundred million years through a process called photosynthesis. The “equipment” for this process originally evolved in certain bacteria and it is now housed inside of plant cells in little structures called “chloroplasts.” One key component is the literally green pigment called “chlorophyl” that captures the solar energy. Another component is an enzyme called “Rubisco” which is the mechanism that takes carbon dioxide and turns it into the chemical foundation growth and in the case of crop plants, the capacity to produce food, feed, fuel and fiber. The other product of this process is the oxygen we breathe.
Room For Improvement
Rubisco is present in all crop and non-crop plants making it the most abundant protein on the planet, but part of the reason that so much of it is needed is that compared to many other enzymes it isn’t all that efficient at doing its job. Indeed, plants at best only absorb 10% of the solar energy they receive during the middle of the day. That raises an interesting question: could a crop plant with a more efficient enzyme become significantly more productive? Could that be a game-changer for agriculture?
For many decades the productivity of crops has been increasing through the contributions of many different technologies, but in theory a better version of Rubisco could lead to a step change. Because of recent advances in “protein engineering” and “machine learning” the goal of making a better Rubisco is within the realm of possibility and is being attempted by several academic research groups.
A Different Approach
There is a start-up protein engineering company called GigaCrop that is pursuing a different strategy. Instead of trying to make a better version of Rubisco they are looking for an alternative enzyme as their starting point.
GigaCrop was founded by CEO Chris Eiben in 2020 as part of a fellowship with the Berkeley Lab Cyclotro Road program in partnership with non-profit Activate funded by the U.S. DOE., and today (March 11th 2025) they announced $4.5 million of pre-seed round funding led by a venture capital group in California called Playground Global. That venture group has a track record of success with investments in relatively “long shot” strategies for other technology categories and one of Playground’s partners, Bruce Leak confirms his group’s confidence that the GigaCrop approach has a reasonable path to success and then a very significant upside if that is achieved.
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