Home - Engineered Yeast Turns Plastic Waste Into 3D Printed Food for Space Missions Food Engineered Yeast Turns Plastic Waste Into 3D Printed Food for Space Missions Aura Moreno 3 hours ago 0 Researchers at Southern Illinois University (SIU) Carbondale have developed a method to convert plastic and agricultural waste into edible food using genetically programmed yeasts, with the resulting material extruded through a 3D printer into protein-rich cookies. The team, funded through NASA’s Deep Space Food Challenge , presented the work during the “Undergraduate and Graduate Research in Biochemistry and Chemical Biology” symposium at the American Chemical Society ’s (ACS) Fall 2026 meeting in Chicago. The project targets a challenge specific to long-duration space missions, where astronauts need reliable food sources without resupply. It also points to potential uses on Earth in settings like submarines, disaster zones, or as a broader response to plastic waste and food security pressures. From Bottles to Bites The process starts with polyethylene terephthalate (PET), the plastic commonly used in water and soda bottles, along with agricultural waste such as corn stalks and leaves. This material is broken down through oxidative hydrothermal dissolution, a technique developed by SIU Carbondale geology professor Ken Anderson that uses water and oxygen at high temperature and pressure to reduce the waste into pieces small enough for microbes to process. Yeasts, including baker’s yeast, were then programmed by Associate Professor Lahiru Jayakody and graduate student Sandhya Jayasekara to convert those pieces into proteins, fats, vitamins, and flavoring compounds. The resulting mixture is combined with fiber, starch, and sweetener, then extruded through a 3D printer to form cookies shaped like the Greek letter mu with a ring around it, which the team calls µBites. “We were trying to develop technologies for plastic upcycling to make more valuable products. We thought, why not focus on making food? Because plastic is carbon and food is carbon,” said Jayakody. The researchers have not yet eaten the cookies, pending institutional approval for human taste testing, though the product has reportedly scored well on aroma among participants willing to try it in resource-limited scenarios. To move the cookies toward broader consumer appeal, Jayasekara developed additional yeast strains capable of producing vanilla flavoring from plant biomass and beta-carotene, a vitamin A precursor, from ethylene glycol derived from PET. “We’re using microbes to develop the cookie into a more attractive, consumer-friendly product,” said Jayasekara. Toward a Fully Microbial Cookie The team’s longer-term goal is to produce the cookies’ remaining ingredients, including the added starch, fiber, and sweetener, using microbes as well.