From Waste to Taste, Microfluidics-based screening for microorganisms project awarded by The Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability at Harvard University

From Waste to Taste, Microfluidics-based screening for microorganisms project awarded by The Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability at Harvard University

February 24, 2025

The Salata Institute at Harvard University announced a fourth round of seed grant awards for work on understudied and emerging topics in climate and sustainability. The projects include research into upcycling dairy waste, the role of autoworkers in the EV transition, measuring the effectiveness of climate adaptation strategies, and more. The Waste to Taste to Upcycle Dairy Waste Project in Weitz Group has been selected and funded! Congratulations, Yan Liu (project lead), and John Heyman.

Summary of the report by The Salata Institute:

The Salata Institute Seed Grant Program supports new research, encourages new interdisciplinary partnerships, and enables faculty whose work is not normally in climate and sustainability to apply their expertise to the climate challenge. With the addition of these five awards, the Salata Institute now supports 32 research projects on understudied and emerging climate topics through this program.

This program is part of the Salata Institute’s aggressive efforts to expand climate and sustainability research across Harvard University. Since its launch in June 2022, the Institute has awarded over $8.8M in research funding, supporting the work of over 60 faculty from every Harvard School.

The Salata Institute Seed Grant Program is supported by a gift from the Troper Wojcicki Foundation. It was with profound sadness that the Salata Institute recently shared news of the passing of Susan Wojcicki, an esteemed adviser and supporter of the Institute who helped make this program possible.

From Waste to Taste: High-throughput Screening for Microbes to Transform Dairy Waste into Sweet-Tasting Proteins as Novel Sugar Alternatives

Principal Investigator: David Weitz, Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and of Applied Physics

Dairy production creates vast volumes of nutrient-rich waste. Lactose-heavy whey permeates, spoiled butter – both are often dumped into landfills or down the drain. Similarly, about 80 percent of the milk used to make cheese is tossed.

This helps explain why the dairy industry is the second-largest food-related contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.

Yet these byproducts are not useless. Recent developments in microbiology have provided novel and economically sustainable opportunities to upcycle dairy waste into valuable products, such as food and fertilizers and industrial chemicals.

The trick is identifying the right microbes to make work.

David Weitz’s lab will use its core technology of microfluidics-assisted high-throughput screening to identify suitable microbes from libraries of millions of mutants. It aims to develop robust, food-safe microbial strains to convert food waste into carbon-neutral products that will benefit the climate and the dairy sector. As a proof-of-concept, it will begin by generating microbes to convert lactose, the major component in dairy waste, into sweet-tasting proteins, which can be used as novel natural sugar alternatives in reduced-sugar products such as low-calorie yogurts and ice creams. The strategy will reduce the climate impact of dairy waste by at least 20%, equivalent to 1 million metric tons of CO2. per year. It will also yield significant revenue for food companies and dairy plants.

For more details, please refer to the original news report “Salata Institute Funds Five New Climate Research Projects“