CHAPTER 3.4: BIOORGANIC SYNTHESIS

When we think about the processes industries use to develop chemicals for food and drugs, or when these processes are portrayed in popular culture, they tend to be the sterile procedures of synthetic organic chemistry. But in fact, most of the compounds we ingest in our meals and our medicines are generated through much squishier processes: they take advantage of the laboratories that nature has built into the Earth’s living organisms. From the viewpoint of the discipline of chemistry, which has long prided itself on making products “synthetically,” gathering products from living things “naturally” has often appeared as the opposing approach. Scientists have begun rhetorically linking the two only recently. The latter, however, has a long history in the form of fermentation research. In Japan — one of the leading countries in fermentation research after World War II — the term “fermentation method” (hakkōhō) was long synonymous with “biosynthetic method” (seigōseihō), and was used directly in contrast to “synthetic method” (gōseihō), which employs more traditional laboratory techniques. The term “fermentation” (hakkō) in Japanese could also refer broadly to the chemical reactions occurring in living cells…