Tiny Microbes Could Brew Big Benefits for Green Biomanufacturing

Key Takeaways. Scientists have engineered bacteria to produce new-to-nature carbon products that could provide a powerful route to sustainable biochemicals. The breakthrough offers sustainable alternatives to chemical manufacturing processes that typically rely on fossil fuels. This advance could also reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the manufacturing of fuels, drugs, and chemicals. A research team led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory ÜBerkeley Lab) and UC Berkeley has engineered bacteria to produce new-to-nature carbon products that could provide a powerful route to sustainable biochemicals. The advance - which was recently announced in the journal Nature - uses bacteria to combine natural enzymatic reactions with a new-to-nature reaction called the "carbene transfer reaction." This work could also one day help reduce industrial emissions because it offers sustainable alternatives to chemical manufacturing processes that typically rely on fossil fuels. "What we showed in this paper is that we can synthesize everything in this reaction - from natural enzymes to carbenes - inside the bacterial cell.