Exxon: Decarbonization Business Is Set For Huge Growth

By Alex Kimani - Apr 11, 2023

Last month, Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM) pulled the plug on its 14-year-long algae biofuels project, becoming the last oil company to abandon what was once considered the fuel of the future. The whole idea was not without merit, though. Algae do have some clear advantages over other biofuel candidates, mainly because these photosynthetic microorganisms are super-efficient at converting sunlight into biomass, have high lipid content of up to 80% for some varieties and are more versatile than, say, corn, a common biofuel crop. 

Unfortunately, Exxon and its Big Oil cohorts discovered that it's too tough to make the economics of algae biofuels competitive with those of much cheaper crude, with algae-based bioproducts firm Cellana estimating that crude would have to hit ~$500/bbl for algae biofuels to compete successfully.

But Exxon is not about to give up on its non-oil ventures. Last week, Exxon CEO Darren Woods told investors that the company’s Low Carbon business has the potential to outperform its legacy oil and natural gas business within a decade and generate hundreds of billions in revenues. Woods outlined projections showing how the business has the potential to hit revenue of billions of dollars within the next five years; tens of billions in 5-10 years, and hundreds of billions after the initial 10-year ramp-up. However, whether Exxon is able to actualize its dream will depend on regulatory and policy support for carbon pricing, as well as the cost to abate greenhouse gas emissions, among other changes, Ammann said.

Exxon believes that this will result in a "much more stable, or less cyclical" that is less prone to commodity price swings through predictable, long-term contracts with customers aiming to lower their own carbon footprint. For instance, Exxon recently signed a long-term contract with  industrial gas company Linde Plc. (NYSE:LIN) that involves offtake of carbon dioxide associated with Linde’s planned clean hydrogen project in Beaumont, Texas.  Exxon will transport and permanently store as much as 2.2M metric tons/year of carbon dioxide each year from Linde’s plant. Back in February, Linde unveiled plans to build a $1.8B complex which will include autothermal reforming with carbon capture and a large air separation plant to supply clean hydrogen and nitrogen.

$4 Trillion Carbon Marketplace

If Exxon’s carbon ventures sound a tad too ambitious, consider the far rosier projections that have been advanced for carbon capture.

Wal van Lierop of Chrysalix Venture Capital and an investor in Canada-based carbon capture startup Svante have proposed creating policies that will make carbon markets not only feasible but profitable. Lierop argues that carbon pricing, Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS) technology and policies need to be such that capturing, repurposing or permanently storing carbon dioxide becomes more profitable than emitting it into the atmosphere. If policymakers were to price CO2 at $100 per ton, the 40 GT of CO2 that the world emits annually represents a $4 trillion opportunity for carbon capture firms. If that figure seems monstrous, consider that it represents just 5% of the global economy and is certainly lower than the nearly $70 trillion in damages that the economy would otherwise suffer in the face of a full-blown climate disaster.

It’s not such a far-fetched idea, either.

Here in the United States, Section 45Q(a)(1) allows a credit of $20 per metric ton of qualified carbon oxide captured by the taxpayer using carbon capture equipment which is originally placed in service at a qualified facility before the date of the enactment of the Bipartisan Budget Act (DOE). It’s essentially a tax code that provides a performance-based tax credit for carbon capture projects that can be claimed when an eligible project has:

• Securely stored the captured carbon dioxide (CO2) in geologic formations, such as oil fields and saline formations; or
• Beneficially used captured CO2 or its precursor carbon monoxide (CO) as a feedstock to produce fuels, chemicals, and products such as concrete in a way that results in emissions reductions as defined by federal requirements.

Today, 45Q pays $35/ton for using captured CO2 in Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) or synthetic fuels and $50/ton for sequestering CO2 in geological storage. A bill under consideration might amend 45Q to pay an even higher credit for direct air capture: $43.75/ton for EOR or fuels and $65.50/ton for geological storage.

Still, that might be too low to encourage carbon capture firms whose breakeven point is higher than $50/ton. Coupling 45Q with a Fee and Dividend system could be a more effective solution. This system is currently under consideration in the U.S. House of Representatives H.R.763. The fees collected under H.R.763 would be distributed as dividends to all U.S. citizens to offset higher gas prices and elevated costs for hydrocarbon-based goods.

CCSU For LNG

The LNG sector is one of the biggest candidates for CCSU, with LNG having one of the most emissions-intensive upstream resource themes in the energy sector. About 40% of the total scope 1 and 2 LNG emissions come from the process of gas liquefaction. 

According to Wood Mackenzie, anywhere from 25-50% of the CO2 emissions depending on the strategy used can be removed from LNG projects using CCS technology. The main options for reducing LNG emissions include CCSU, carbon offsets, electrification, methane leakage reduction, and the use of renewables and batteries. 

Luckily, LNG players are well placed to employ CCSU to lower their emissions by simply repurposing their existing infrastructure.

The first approach involves capturing reservoir CO2. The big advantage of this method is that the acid gas removal unit (AGRU) used to capture CO2 does not incur additional costs since all LNG projects remove CO2 from the feed gas stream before liquefaction to prevent the CO2 from freezing and blocking processes. WoodMac says reservoir CCS has the potential to lower the overall intensity of LNG projects by 25%, and in some cases up to 50%.

The second approach is post-combustion CCSU, which involves capturing CO2 from the LNG flue gas stream. Although post-combustion CCSU is more expensive than reservoir CCSU, there are significant cost benefits of adding post-combustion CCS to a new-build LNG facility due to design and location synergies.

By Alex Kimani for Oilprice.com

Source :

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Exxon-Decarbonization-Business-Is-Set-For-Huge-Growth.html

Carbon Removal Tech Would Use More Energy than All Homes Combined, Shell Finds

FIRST PUBLISHED APR 11, 2023

Updated Apr 11, 2023

COVERING CLIMATE NOW

This story originally appeared in The Energy Mix and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story

Work by oil giant Shell throws doubt on an energy-intensive technology to suck carbon from the air, writes Gaye Taylor

It would take more energy than all the world’s houses will consume in 2100 to power a fledgling technology that captures enough carbon dioxide from the air to limit global heating at 1.5C, according to British multinational oil company Shell.

In a Shell scenario where the world limits global warming in line with the Paris climate agreement, energy demand for direct air capture (DAC) technology rises “from about nothing today to almost 66 exajoules in 2100,” reports Bloomberg.

“That would be more than the energy needed to heat and power all the world’s homes by then,” the news agency adds. [It isn’t clear how much energy efficiency or fuel switching is built into that comparison, but 66 exajoules is still a huge amount of energy—Ed.]

Bloomberg cites Sky 2050, the more optimistic of Shell’s two latest energy security scenarios [pdf], in which long-term climate security is the priority embraced by all. In this pathway, DAC with carbon storage (DACCS) deployment is in full swing by 2040, absorbing more than five billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. The united efforts of politicians, the public, and the private sector achieve net-zero by 2050, and although 1.5C is breached sometime mid-century, collective action brings temperatures back down to 1.24C by the century’s end.

In Shell’s bleaker Archipelagos pathway, energy security fears trump climate concerns, with no apparent reference to the potential of less expensive solar and wind to meet both objectives. Efforts at collective action fall by the wayside, and DACCS is virtually abandoned until 2080. “The global average surface temperature is still rising in 2100 but is levelling off at around 2.2C as emissions close in on net zero,” Shell projects.

That’s after years of hearing that 1.5C is the guardrail for averting the worst effects of climate change, and that every 0.1C between 1.5 and 2.0C will be measured in lives saved or lost.

These models come nearly four years after researchers at Imperial College London’s Grantham Institute for Climate Change wrote in a Nature Communications study that in 2100, DAC machines could needed 300 exajoules of energy annually, or 25 percent of total global energy demand.

“To put it another way, it would be equivalent to the current annual energy demand of China, the United States, the European Union, and Japan combined,” Carbon Brief wrote at the time.

According to the Grantham Institute researchers, DAC—still at an experimental stage but generally involving an energy-intensive process where the greenhouse gas is “captured” using chemical “sorbents”—could “allow a reduction in near-term mitigation effort in some energy-intensive sectors that are difficult to decarbonise, such as transport and industry.”

Work by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) maintained that negative emissions technologies like DAC will be required to keep global heating below 1.5C, but warned that such technologies must never be deployed as an alternative to emissions reductions.

The IPCC’s Summary for Policymakers issued last month made no mention of DAC as a realistic element of a decarbonisation plan; it identified solar, wind, and methane capture from the fossil industry as the quickest, most cost-effective ways to drive down emissions.

At the time of their study, the Grantham researchers did conclude that DACCS “reduces the marginal abatement costs to achieve the climate target by between 60 to more than 90 percent.” But there remained uncertainty about whether it is possible to scale DAC technology fast enough to capture the necessary target [pdf] of 30 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide per year. A 2019 study found that this would require building 30,000 large-scale DAC factories. “For comparison, there are fewer than 10,000 coal-fired power stations in the world today,” Carbon Brief said.

“The risk of assuming that DACCS can be deployed at scale, and finding it to be subsequently unavailable, leads to a global temperature overshoot of up to 0.8C,” the study authors warned.

Shell’s scenarios do not address the problems of scaling DACCS, nor the danger of overshoot.

And such dangers should not be discounted, Carbon Brief deputy editor and climate and energy policy editor Dr. Simon Evans told The Energy Mix in an email: “The evidence suggests it would be risky to assume we will be able to deploy lots of direct capture at low cost.”

That risk could be minimised by cutting emissions more quickly and reducing the need for carbon removals, Evans added. “For example, by tackling energy demand as well as supply.”

Despite the unknowns, there’s major interest in DAC, Bloomberg reports, with governments as well as the private sector heavily invested in its success. The Biden administration has a new $US3.5-billion ($NZ5.6 billion) DAC programme, and fossil mammoth Occidental Petroleum is planning a 2024 launch of the world’s first million-tonne DAC plant, known as DAC1, in the Permian Basin, the massive US fracking fields in Texas and New Mexico.

1PointFive, the Occidental subsidiary developing DAC1, has pledged that all its DAC plants “will be powered by zero-emission energy sources, such as wind, solar, or NET power.”

According to Net Power (another Occidental subsidiary), “NET power” is produced by burning natural gas in the presence of oxygen, then using the resultant carbon dioxide in a “turbo-expander” to produce electricity. It is then either pressurised for export or recirculated. Located as it is in the Permian Basin, DAC1 will have plenty of natural gas close at hand.

Source :

https://www.newsroom.co.nz/carbon-removal-tech-would-use-more-energy-than-all-homes-combined-shell-finds

Carbonaide Turns CO2 into Carbon-negative Concrete Blocks that Can Trap Emissions

apr 11, 2023

ABSORBING CARBON EMISSIONS USING CONCRETE

 

Carbonaide, a spin-out company from VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, takes concrete action to reduce carbon footprint by transforming CO2 itself into carbon-negative concrete blocks that eventually become a carbon sink, or an object that is able to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Carbonaide says that concrete has a tendency to capture carbon dioxide through a process called carbonation. The technique causes the iron reinforcements to rust, which, in turn, breaks the concrete structures.

‘We turned this disadvantage into an advantage. The Carbonaide method makes the calculated carbon footprint of concrete manufacturing carbon negative: -60 kg per cubic metre of concrete. The carbon footprint of conventional concrete is approximately 250–300 kg per cubic metre,’ says Carbonaide CEO Tapio Vehmas. With Carbonaide technology, the concrete manufacturer plans to cut down cement consumption in daily production, a material dubbed one of the largest single sources of carbon dioxide emissions, and decrease the carbon footprint of the products further by mineralizing CO2 into concrete.

images courtesy of Carbonaide and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland

CARBONAIDE TRAPS CO2 UNLIKE TRADITIONAL CONCRETE

 

Carbonaide, a carbon-emission solution from VTT Technical Research Centre Finland, claims that its process is based on carbonation, which binds carbon dioxide into precast concrete using an automated system at atmospheric pressure. By lowering the cement content and mineralizing CO2 into concrete, the method can cut CO2 emissions by up to 50%. When industrial byproducts such as slags, green liquor dregs, and bio-ash are used in the binding process, the result is carbon-negative concrete, and CO2 can be permanently stored and eliminated from the carbon cycle.

Vehmas says that the team has already demonstrated its technology can reduce the CO2 emissions of conventional concrete by 45% during its pilot-batch production in the autumn of 2022. ‘Our goal at Carbonaide is to create a more sustainable future with cutting-edge tech that doesn’t just reduce the carbon emissions of construction materials like concrete, but that traps more CO2 than they emit throughout their lifetime. It is very natural that the constructed environment becomes a CO2 sink as it is the largest volume of man-made material,’ he adds.

carbonaide carbon concrete emissioncarbonaide claims that its technology can reduce the CO2 emissions of conventional concrete by 45%

 

BINDING 500 MEGATONS OF CO2 BY 2050

 

The concrete industry contributes 8% of the global carbon emissions, and with legislation becoming enforced and observed in construction materials, the industry seeks to generate an alternative block that can withstand the standards of environmental laws on carbon neutrality and reducing emissions. VTT claims that it has studied concrete structures throughout its 80-year history and founding Carbonaide poses as an extension of its research, the area that finally churns out a tangible result from its decades-long exploration.

As of March 28th, 2023, Carbonaide has raised EUR 1.8 million in seed funding led by Lakan Betoni and Vantaa Energy. The round was completed with public loans and in-kind contributions from Business Finland and other Finnish concrete companies and strategic investors. The company will use the funding to integrate its CO2 curing technology into an automated production line of its precast concrete factory in Hollola, Finland. Carbonaide’s vision is to open ten operational units in the Nordics by 2026 and bind approximately 500 megatons of carbon dioxide annually by 2050 – corresponding to 10–20% of the concrete market.

carbon-negative concrete from Carbonaide

by 2050, Carbonaide hopes to bind approximately 500 megatons of carbon dioxide annually

Source :

https://www.designboom.com/technology/carbonaide-co2-carbon-negative-concrete-blocks-trap-emissions-04-11-2023/

BP buys stake in UK carbon capture project

Harbour Energy scheme aims to meet up to a third of Britain’s annual target

The Viking project will repurpose depleted gasfields off the Humber coast © AP

David Sheppard in London APRIL 11 2023

BP has acquired a 40 per cent stake in the UK’s Viking CCS project from Harbour Energy as the government looks to accelerate plans to develop carbon capture and storage.

The Viking project aims to meet up to a third of the UK’s annual target of capturing 30mn tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2030, by repurposing old depleted gasfields off the Humber region coast. BP’s own CO₂ emissions in its upstream oil and gas production totalled 307mn tonnes in 2022.

There are also plans to ship in additional CO₂ emissions from other parts of the UK and abroad through the port of Immingham on England’s north-east coast.

BP’s investment provides significant backing for a project that is among the leading contenders for the government’s next phase of approvals under its Track 2 carbon capture development process.

The oil major will absorb 40 per cent of the total costs, according to a person familiar with the matter, although terms of the overall deal were not disclosed.

BP is already leading the East Coast Cluster as operator of the Northern Endurance Partnership on Teesside and the Humber, which is targeting cutting 23mn tonnes of CO₂ emissions a year by 2035.

Harbour, the largest oil and gas producer in the UK North Sea, will operate the Viking project and retain a 60 per cent stake. But investing in Viking would give BP an additional back-up in its UK CCS operations, as well as opening up options such as shipping in CO₂ from overseas — a potentially higher margin proposition.

Anja Dotzenrath, head of gas and low carbon energy at BP, said the company was “excited” about the project’s potential for “helping to decarbonise the UK” and as “a future CO₂ shipping destination”.

BP is looking to expand its investments in green technologies and renewable energy, although CEO Bernard Looney has come under pressure from investors to show technologies such as offshore wind and CCS can provide competitive profit margins when compared with oil and gas.

Having reduced the company’s focus on the North Sea in previous decades BP has started to invest more in the UK again, focusing on offshore wind and carbon capture as part of its energy transition strategy.

The UK government said in March that the Viking project and the Acorn project in Scotland were seen as “best placed” to be appointed in its Track 2 process, joining the East Coast Cluster and the Hynet North West projects that were selected in 2021 in the first round.

The government’s deadline for other projects beyond Viking and Acorn to submit proposals is April 28, otherwise, the two will be automatically selected.

“Our entry into Viking CCS demonstrates BP’s commitment to Backing Britain through substantial investment and helping the country achieve its net zero goals,” said Louise Kingham, BP’s head of country for the UK.

Harbour Energy’s chief executive Linda Cook, who has been a fierce critic of the UK government’s windfall tax on oil and gas producers, said the Viking project could “unlock billions of pounds of investment across the full CCS value chain”.

Source :

https://www.ft.com/content/c71bfe7a-c7c8-4c6f-90c7-15ccdf2e2da8

Twenty Years of the Human Genome: Growing Older and Wiser

April 8, 2023

In the 20 years since the Human Genome Project was completed in 2003, we’ve dramatically expanded our understanding of the impact of genetics on human health, but the work is far from finished.

PETER ATTIA

By: Kathryn Birkenbach, Peter Attia

Twenty years ago this week, the Human Genome Project (HGP) was declared complete, marking the end of a 13-year and nearly $3-billion endeavor. Hailed by many as one of the greatest achievements in modern science and medicine, the project has still had its share of critics, many of whom bemoan its failure to solve the causes of complex (i.e., virtually all) diseases and inaugurate an era of personalized therapies. But in looking back, these pie-in-the-sky predictions about the HGP’s potential immediate benefits reveal just how little we truly knew about our own genetics and biology before this project began – and how much we gained as a result of its completion. While it may not have given us all of the answers we sought, it did teach us that we’d been asking the wrong questions, and it provided the necessary foundation for investigating the right ones.

Discussion of the full impact of this immense project could fill a library, but for now, I’d like to highlight just a few macro points which, in retrospect, limited the clinical benefit we could derive from the Human Genome Project itself but have shaped progress in genetics over the last 20 years and pave our way into the future.

DNA is far more than genes

The “central dogma” of biology states that genes “work” by being expressed – that is, they are transcribed into RNA, which in turn is translated into proteins, which then carry out countless cellular functions. Prior to the HGP, it had been thought that the complexity of an organism would therefore correlate positively with its number of genes: more genes = more proteins = more functions.

Given this logic, one of the most shocking results of the HGP was that the human genome contained far fewer genes than previously thought – only around 20,000, or roughly the same number as are found in a sea sponge (or ~one-third of the number found in soybeans). Further, it was discovered that this “functional” DNA accounted for only a tiny minority of the total human genome. Approximately 98% of our DNA does not code for proteins at all, and scientists were at a loss for how to interpret this genomic “dark matter.” The research also revealed that our genetics are remarkably similar to that of other species. For instance, mainstream media has popularized the knowledge that humans are 50% genetically identical to bananas, while the fact that we share 99% of our DNA with chimpanzees illustrates just how little of our genetic material defines all of our many uniquely human qualities. Together, these surprises signaled that our understanding of how genetics influence our biology was woefully simplistic.

An open book, but we’re still just learning to read

The Human Genome Project mapped out the sequence of letters that make up the human genetic code, but the task of deriving meaning from that sequence was not as trivial as many had hoped. The relatively small number of genes implied (correctly) that they – and their eventual protein products – could be modified or regulated in myriad ways which would alter their expression and function. To some, this meant that the project was a failure and that research ought to shift away from genetics and toward environmental influences on disease. One particularly pessimistic journalist went as far as to call the HGP a “map to nowhere” and expressed the belief that deciphering such a complex system would never be possible.

This view is astoundingly short-sighted, as research over the last 20 years has shown. In addition to facilitating further study and elucidation of the functions of genes themselves, the HGP led to the 2003 launch of the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) Project, aimed at determining the function of all genomic material, whether protein-coding or not. ENCODE has since reported that over 80% of the genome demonstrates some form of functionality, with much of the “dark matter” DNA involved in regulation of gene expression in various cell types – a critical link between the genetic code and biological relevance. However, the task of deciphering which genes are regulated by which non-coding elements and under which circumstances is ongoing.

The need for greater diversity and inclusion

Another undertaking that arose in the wake of the HGP was the 1000 Genomes Project, an international collaboration to catalog common genetic variations across humanity. This project highlights another important limitation of the HGP: a lack of diversity.

In order to use genetic information to gain insights into personal health risks, we must learn how genetic sequences vary in certain locations across individuals, and how each of those different variations correlates with disease. (For example, I’ve frequently discussed how the APOE4 variant of the APOE gene is associated with elevated risk of Alzheimer’s disease.) But we can only study risk for the variants we know exist, and we only know they exist if they’ve been documented before.

Analysis has revealed that around 70% of the original HGP genome derived from a single individual, providing a reference for comparison but virtually no information on variation. Since then, the cost of human sequencing has plummeted, facilitating expansion of sampling for the purpose of identifying and studying variants. But this process has been heavily biased in its representation: a 2019 study found that around 80% of all participants in genetic studies have been of European descent, a group which represents around 16% of the world’s population. This disparity is a problem for two reasons.

First, it means that underrepresented groups are far less likely to benefit from genetic risk assessments, as they are more likely to possess variants for which we do not have enough data on possible associations with disease. This in turn is likely to heighten racial and geographical inequalities in quality of medical care.

Second, it deprives us of a source of knowledge which might benefit all populations. Certain variants are only present in specific populations and are therefore more likely to be discovered by sampling from a broad spectrum of humanity. But the insights these variants provide on health may be applicable to many. An excellent example of this scenario is the identification of a rare variant, present primarily in African Americans, that results in loss of function of the PCSK9 protein. As I explained in a previous newsletter, these individuals have low cholesterol levels and are largely protected from atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease – a discovery which inspired the development of a class of lipid-lowering PCSK9 inhibitor drugs, which have proven highly effective in reducing cardiovascular risk across broad populations.

A giant leap forward, but the journey is long

This discussion barely scratches the surface on the implications and impact of the Human Genome Project, let alone on the future of genetics and its applications to health and medicine. (I’d like to explore this latter topic in a bit more detail in a future “Ask Me Anything” episode of the podcast.) Still, in honor of the 20th anniversary of the project’s completion, I hope I’ve provided a small taste of the many ways in which this achievement has revolutionized our understanding of our own biology and – far from being a “map to nowhere” – has illuminated the path forward.

To call it a failure because it did not instantly solve all questions regarding the genetic bases of diseases would be a bit like saying the entire history of science has been a failure because we’ve never determined how to turn iron into gold. The project’s completion was accurately described at the time as “the end of the beginning,” and over the last twenty years, we’ve made steady progress in tackling the complexities of gene expression, function, and variation. As we march through this new phase of the journey toward understanding how our DNA affects our health, new questions, mysteries, and setbacks will certainly arise. But at least we’re on our way.

Source :

https://peterattiamd.com/twenty-years-of-the-human-genome-growing-older-and-wiser/

There’s a symphony in the antibody protein the body makes to neutralize the coronavirus

Professor Markus Buehler composed it, and a South Korean orchestra performed it; it’s the latest in a series of artistic collaborations sparked by Buehler’s exploration of the structure of SARS-CoV-2.

Watch VideoListen

Kim Martineau | MIT Quest for Intelligence

Publication Date:May 21, 2021

The pandemic reached a new milestone this spring with the rollout of Covid-19 vaccines. MIT Professor Markus Buehler marked the occasion by writing “Protein Antibody in E Minor,” an orchestral piece performed last month by South Korea’s Lindenbaum Festival Orchestra. The room was empty, but the message was clear.

“It’s a hopeful piece as we enter this new phase in the pandemic,” says Buehler, the McAfee Professor of Engineering at MIT, and also a composer of experimental music.

“This is the beginning of a musical healing project,” adds Hyung Joon Won, a Seoul-based violinist who initiated the collaboration.

“Protein Antibody in E Minor” is the sequel to “Viral Counterpoint of the Spike Protein,” a piece Buehler wrote last spring during the first wave of coronavirus infections. Picked up by the media, “Viral Counterpoint” went global, like the virus itself, reaching Won, who at the time was performing for patients hospitalized with Covid-19. Won became the first in a series of artists to approach Buehler about collaborating.

At Won’s request, Buehler adapted “Viral Counterpoint” for the violin. This spring, the two musicians teamed up again, with Buehler translating the coronavirus-attacking antibody protein into a score for a 10-piece orchestra.

The two pieces are as different as the proteins they are based on. “Protein Antibody” is harmonious and playful; “Viral Counterpoint” is foreboding, even sinister. “Protein Antibody,” which is based on the part of the protein that attaches to SARS-CoV-2, runs for five minutes; “Viral Counterpoint,” which represents the virus’s entire spike protein, meanders for 50.

Markus J. Buehler · Protein Antibody in E minor

The antibody protein’s straightforward shape lent itself to a classical composition, says Buehler. The intricate folds of the spike protein, by contrast, required a more complex representation.

Both pieces use a theory that Buehler devised for translating protein structures into musical scores. Both proteins — antigen and pathogen — have 20 amino acids, which can be expressed as 20 unique vibrational tones. Proteins, like other molecules, vibrate at different frequencies, a phenomenon Buehler has used to “see” the virus and its variants, capturing their complex entanglements in a musical score.

In work with the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab and PhD student Yiwen Hu, Buehler discovered that the proteins that stud SARS-Cov-2 vibrate less frequently and intensely than its more lethal cousins, SARS and MERS. He hypothesizes that the viruses use vibrations to jimmy their way into cells; the more energetic the protein, the deadlier the virus or mutation.

The molecular mechanics of the pandemic: MERS, SARS and COVID-19

“As the coronavirus continues to mutate, this method gives us another way of studying the variants and the threat they pose,” says Buehler. “It also shows the importance of considering proteins as vibrating objects in their biological context.”

Translating proteins into music is part of Buehler’s larger work designing new proteins by borrowing ideas from nature and harnessing the power of AI. He has trained deep-learning algorithms to both translate the structure of existing proteins into their vibrational patterns and run the operation in reverse to infer structure from vibrational patterns. With these tools, he hopes to take existing proteins and create entirely new ones targeted for specific technological or medical needs.

The process of turning science into art is like finding another “microscope” to observe nature, says Buehler. It has also opened his work to a broader audience. More than a year after “Viral Counterpoint’s” debut, the piece has racked up more than a million downloads on SoundCloud. Some listeners were so moved they asked Buehler for permission to create their own interpretation of his work. In addition to Won, the violinist in South Korea, the piece was picked up by a ballet company in South Africa, a glass artist in Oregon, and a dance professor in Michigan, among others.

A “suite” of homespun ballets

The Joburg Ballet shut down last spring with the rest of South Africa. But amid the lockdown, “Viral Counterpoint” reached Iain MacDonald, artistic director of Joburg Ballet. Then, as now, the company’s dancers were quarantined at home. Putting on a traditional ballet was impossible, so MacDonald improvised; he assigned each dancer a fragment of Buehler’s music and asked them to choreograph a response. They performed from home as friends and family filmed from their cellphones. Stitched together, the segments became “The Corona Suite,” a six-minute piece that aired on YouTube last July.

In it, the dancers twirl and pirouette on a set of unlikely stages: in the stairwell of an apartment building, on a ladder in a garden, and beside a glimmering swimming pool. With no access to costumes, the dancers made do with their own leotards, tights, and even boxer briefs, in whatever shade of red they could find. “Red became the socially-distant cohesive thread that tied the company together,” says MacDonald.

MacDonald says the piece was intended as a public service announcement, to encourage people to stay home. It was also meant to inspire hope: that the company’s dancers would return to the stage, stay mentally and physically fit, and that everyone would pull through. “We all hoped that the virus would not cause harm to our loved ones,” he says. “And that we, as a people, could come out of this stronger and united than ever before.” 

A Covid “sonnet” cast in glass

Jerri Bartholomew, a microbiologist at Oregon State University, was supposed to spend her sabbatical last year at a lab in Spain. When Covid intervened, she retreated to the glass studio in her backyard. There, she focused on her other passion: making art from her research on fish parasites. She had previously worked with musicians to translate her own data into music; when she heard “Viral Counterpoint” she was moved to reinterpret Buehler’s music as glass art. 

She found his pre-print paper describing the sonification process, digitized the figures, and transferred them to silkscreen. She then printed them on a sheet of glass, fusing and casting the images to create a series of increasingly abstract representations. After, she spent hours polishing each glass work. “It’s a lot of grinding,” she says. Her favorite piece, Covid Sonnet, shows the spike protein flowing into Buehler’s musical score. “His musical composition is an abstraction,” she says. “I hope people will be curious about why it looks and sounds the way it does. It makes the science more interesting.”

Translating a lethal virus into movement

Months into the pandemic, Covid’s impact on immigrants in the United States was becoming clear; Rosely Conz, a choreographer and native of Brazil, wanted to channel her anxiety into art. When she heard “Viral Counterpoint,” she knew she had a score for her ballet. She would make the virus visible, she decided, in the same way Buehler had made it audible. “I looked for aspects of the virus that could be applied to movement — its machine-like characteristics, its transfer from one performer to another, its protein spike that makes it so infectious,” she says.

“Virus” debuted this spring at Alma College, a liberal arts school in rural Michigan where Conz teaches. On a dark stage shimmering with red light, her students leaped and glided in black pointe shoes and face masks. Their elbows and legs jabbed at the air, almost robotically, as if to channel the ugliness of the virus. Those gestures were juxtaposed by “melting movements” that Rosely says embody the humanity of the dancer. The piece is literally about the virus, but also the constraints of making art in a crisis; the dancers maintained six feet of distance throughout. “I always tell my students that in choreography we should use limitation as possibility, and that is what I tried to do,” she says. 

Back at MIT, Buehler is planning several more “Protein Antibody” performances with Won this year. In the lab, he and Hu, his PhD student, are expanding their study of the molecular vibrations of proteins to see if they might have therapeutic value. “It’s the next step in our quest to better understand the molecular mechanics of the life,” he says.

Source :

https://news.mit.edu/2021/symphony-antibody-protein-body-makes-neutralize-coronavirus-0521

Viral Counterpoint of the Coronavirus Spike Protein

Viral Counterpoint of the Coronavirus Spike Protein · Markus J. Buehler

Released on: 2020-03-26