
Artificial leaf produces first drugs using sunlight - signa11
https://newatlas.com/science/artificial-leaf-first-drugs-sunlight/
======
OJFord
> They’re made of translucent materials that allow sunlight in and direct it
> towards tiny microfluidic channels running through the material like veins.
> A certain liquid is flowing through these channels, and the idea is that the
> energy from the sunlight triggers a chemical reaction in that liquid,
> turning it into something useful like a drug or fuel.

What a crap article, could this be more vague? 'A certain liquid'?

~~~
thereisnospork
Reminds me of that Elizabeth Holmes quote

>“A chemistry is performed so that a chemical reaction occurs and generates a
signal from the chemical interaction with the sample, which is translated into
a result, which is then reviewed by certified laboratory personnel”

~~~
teekert
Sound like a perfect patent application, nice and broad, as all patents should
be.

------
cwkoss
Normal leaves can also produce drugs using sunlight.

~~~
skybrian
True, but this way it avoids the GMO label. :)

I'm wondering about manufacturing costs, though.

~~~
umvi
> True, but this way it avoids the GMO label. :)

I think he's talking about marijuana leaves (THC) or tobacco leaves
(nicotine), etc.

------
dpflan
Is the leaf structure in anyway necessary for the chemical reactions or is it
just a nice, familiar form that makes the project seem more natural than some
array of microfluidic chambers?

~~~
Qwertystop
From the article and video, looks like the requirements are a thin tube and a
block of translucent material to focus light onto the tube. And presumably the
tube needs to be the right length, to give it enough sun time to react at a
given flow speed.

I would guess that while the leaf shape in particular is not required, the
loose space-filling curve is a good shape for the tube to get the most use out
of the block. Could it perhaps be slightly more space-efficient with a
rectangle and a heater-coil shape? Maybe, but I'd expect not by much, and I
would expect other resource constraints (the reactants) to matter before
you've filled all available sunny spots and need to maximize medicine-per-
square-meter, if only because sunny rooftops are not exactly high-demand
space.

~~~
dpflan
I saw the leaves, read the article, then thought the leaf structure was a mere
contrivance that wasn't necessary and perhaps made scaling manufacturing
actually a bit harder/expensive than simpler geometries (neither chem nor
manufacturing are domains I claim to understand, so someone more knowledgeable
may have real insights).

------
not_a_cop75
This feels a lot more like a vaporware joke than a real product. And even if
real, the GMO is hands down a better idea. I'm tired of everyone thinking
having a trash planet is somehow okay.

~~~
AstralStorm
The chemistry in this synthetic leaf is much simpler and more controllable
than in any GMO. It's not a replacement.

~~~
not_a_cop75
Maybe so, but what is the process of recycling one? Are we going to have
landfills full of synthetic leaves in 20 years?

------
jelliclesfarm
I also grow traditional medicinal herbs in my farm.

I couldn’t help but wonder if at the end of the day, it’s really going come
back to herbalism. After all, everything is ‘organic’.

------
AstralStorm
I'd like to know more details on how this works, does anyone here have links
to papers?

~~~
kasbah
The paper is linked at the end of the article.

[https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/anie.201908...](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/anie.201908553)

~~~
AstralStorm
Oh, missed it thanks to mobile. Thank you.

------
spodek
Reminds me of the lines from the song Big Yellow Taxi, "They took all the
trees and put them in a tree museum and charged the people a dollar and a half
to see them," and "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot."

I like that they're doing this. I wish our system wasn't at the same time
burning so many leaves in the Amazon and all over that were helping us
already.

~~~
em3rgent0rdr
On the otherhand, if us humans can make a replacement for trees which aren't
susceptible to fire, which acts as as better carbon sink, and which more
effectively produces useful stuff for us, then it isn't necessarily bad for us
to replace trees with artificial ones.

~~~
parksy
Depends on your definition of "bad."

There are countless species of tree, shrub, grass, and moss in a typical
forest. Also, fungi, bacteria, birds, reptiles, mammals, insects, arachnids.
In the rivers, lakes and streams within a forest ecosystem there's countless
fish, crustaceans, algae, plankton.

If we "replace" the trees, perhaps through fire, then we lose the biodiversity
that comes with them. The biodiversity is a naturally balanced system with
finely interweaved chemical processes that mutually support the whole. We lose
the trees, we lose everything that comes with them and end up with desert.

A desert world covered in plastic "trees" is not the future I want for my
children, and I am sure many would agree.

~~~
tripletmass
Right, the Never-Never of Australia has in the past offered license to a
venture hoping to make much of that desert's temperature swings and day
insolation, loping off the train and eventually (4mos.) faltering when the
human maintainer looked best [they felt isolated and things broke.]

10.1016@j.joule.2019.07.010.pdf nominates it (and The Sahara) to host
Radiative Cooling (e.g. blown film er, tents or such) to buy us time to fix
the full 20+ gigatons of carbon a year. It would lower risks to the
photocatalytic and other green process chemical and pharma. efforts nearby.
Indeed it's probably more attractive to make antimalarial drugs than to
photoproduce ozone for use on catalysts to treat sewage (on N-doped MoO2
substrate, say.) Straps are necessary for the boot...good speed.

