I’ve given you sunshine.

I’ve given you dirt.

You’ve given me nothin’

but heartache and hurt!

I’m beggin’ you sweetly.

I’m down on my knees.

Oh please,

Grow protein!!!

Biological life be like: ahaha entropy go brrrr

Then you find out that the lack of an ingredient results in the microbes producing the product lol.

Certain algae for example, need to be “starved” in a way that results in them switching from conventional photosynthesis that produces glucose to photosynthesis that functions to generate Hydrogen and Oxygen alone. The Oxygen is used for respiration and the Hydrogen is essentially dumped as a waste product. They can only sustain this for relatively short periods before their stockpile of carbohydrates is sufficiently depleted. Which means these bioreactors need to be cycled through a fattening phase where the algae stockpile fuel and a starvation phase where they exhaust that stockpile while producing Hydrogen.