{"id":119002,"date":"2021-01-29T18:22:16","date_gmt":"2021-01-30T02:22:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/01\/lab-grown-wood-could-let-us-grow-furniture-in-a-lab-instead-of-in-a-forest"},"modified":"2021-01-29T18:22:16","modified_gmt":"2021-01-30T02:22:16","slug":"lab-grown-wood-could-let-us-grow-furniture-in-a-lab-instead-of-in-a-forest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/01\/lab-grown-wood-could-let-us-grow-furniture-in-a-lab-instead-of-in-a-forest","title":{"rendered":"Lab-grown wood could let us grow furniture in a lab instead of in a forest"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/lab-grown-wood-could-let-us-grow-furniture-in-a-lab-instead-of-in-a-forest2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn a paper recently published the Journal of Cleaner Production, the researchers detail how they grew wood-like plant tissue from cells extracted from the leaves of a zinnia plant, without soil or sunlight. \u201cThe plant cells are similar to stem cells,\u201d says Luis Fernando Vel\u00e1squez-Garc\u00eda, a principal scientist in MIT\u2019s Microsystems Technology Laboratories and co-author of the paper. \u201cThey have the potential to be many things.\u201d With the ability to \u201ctune\u201d the plant cells into whatever shape they decide, Ashley Beckwith, mechanical engineering PhD student and the paper\u2019s lead author, says they could use this process to grow more efficient materials. \u201cTrees grow in tall cylindrical poles, and we rarely use tall cylindrical poles in industrial applications,\u201d she says. \u201cSo you end up shaving off a bunch of material that you spent 20 years growing and that ends up being a waste product.\u201d Instead, their idea is to grow structures that are more practical, like rectangular boards or eventually an entire table that doesn\u2019t need to be assembled, which would reduce waste and potentially let land currently used for logging instead be preserved as forest.\u201d<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>Why cut down trees when you can grow wood in the exact shape you need?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cIn a paper recently published the Journal of Cleaner Production, the researchers detail how they grew wood-like plant tissue from cells extracted from the leaves of a zinnia plant, without soil or sunlight. \u201cThe plant cells are similar to stem cells,\u201d says Luis Fernando Vel\u00e1squez-Garc\u00eda, a principal scientist in MIT\u2019s Microsystems Technology Laboratories and co-author [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":542,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-119002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-engineering"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/542"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119002\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}