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Bird flu too cold

01.07.2010

Why didn't the avian flu, which made a lot of noise, turn into the "plague of the XNUMXst century"? According to virologists from Imperial College London (England) and the University of North Carolina (USA), this virus is too cold in humans.

In birds, with their extremely active metabolism, the body temperature is constantly very high. So, in ducks, which were mainly accused of spreading bird flu, the normal temperature is 40-42,5 degrees Celsius, in ravens - 42, and in swifts - even 44 degrees.

Meanwhile, the temperature of the human nasal mucosa, where the influenza virus must initially multiply, rarely exceeds 33 degrees Celsius. To cause a pandemic, the virus must first mutate, adapt to such a low temperature.

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Egg white is one of the most important and common additives in the food industry. But to obtain it, you need to breed, grow and care for a large number of chickens. This means that a significant amount of water is being used, agricultural land is expanding, threatening natural environments, and a lot of greenhouse gases are being released. And given that the world's population is growing, we can expect an increase in chicken farming, which will have an even greater negative impact on the environment. In addition to environmental concerns, intensive poultry farming threatens more frequent outbreaks of infections that can be transmitted from poultry to humans, such as bird flu.

Giving up egg white is not an option, so science is working to develop alternatives. It can be the use of genetically modified microbes, which forced the production of chicken egg protein - ovalbumin - by introducing the corresponding gene into the genome. For example, this has already been done with E. coli (Escherichia coli) and microscopic fungi Trichoderma reesei. However, there has been a reluctance to switch to industrial-scale production of microbial chicken protein due to the uncertainty that this option is more environmentally friendly and cost-effective compared to poultry farming.

A group of scientists from the University of Helsinki, the Finnish Center for Technology Research VTT and Solar Foods tried to understand the feasibility of replacing chicken eggs with microbes. The researchers began to compare the environmental impact of Trichoderma reesei producing a unit of ovalbumin on an industrial scale (100 kilograms) and obtaining the same amount of protein in the traditional way from chicken eggs. The calculations took into account land use, the required amount of water, the degree of soil oxidation, greenhouse gas emissions and other parameters. Since microbial food production relies heavily on electricity, the feasibility of the technology will vary in different countries, depending on their availability of electricity.

Comparison of microbial egg white production in different countries indicates that it is more environmentally profitable to use the technology with an increase in the share of renewable energy sources. Thus, the contribution of electricity to global warming potential under the scenario of Poland, which relies mainly on coal, was 34 percent, while under the scenario of Finland, which uses mainly nuclear power with a significant renewable contribution, the figure was only 2 percent.

Microbial technology can make egg whites more environmentally friendly than traditional poultry production. Microbial production of ovalbumin uses nearly 90 percent less land and has a 31-55 percent lower global warming potential.

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