Science, Space and Technology News 2024
The chemical industry, which heavily relies on fossil resources to produce plastics, dyes, and artificial flavors, consumes over one million tons of these resources daily, contributing to approximately 5% of global emissions.
“Globally, it consumes 500 million tons per year, or more than one million tons per day,” says Julia Vorholt, Professor at the Institute of Microbiology atfootprint of the chemical industry is even six to ten times larger, amounting to about five percent of total emissions globally.” She and her team are looking for ways to reduce the chemical industry’s dependence on fossil fuels.Bacteria that feed on methanol, known as methylotrophs, are at the center of these efforts.
They continued to grow the bacteria under special conditions in the laboratory for more than a year until the microbes could produce all cell components from methanol. Over the course of around 1,000 more generations, these synthetic methylotrophs became increasingly efficient, eventually doubling every four hours when fed only with methanol. “The improved growth rate makes the bacteria economically interesting,” says Vorholt.
However, the researchers still need to significantly increase the yield and productivity to enable economically viable use of the bacteria. Vorholt and her team recently received an innovation fund “to further expand plans towards applications and to select products to focus on first,” says Vorholt.
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