Monday, April 20, 2015

Millions of Liters of Expensive Juice from One Fruit



Nootkatone is an expensive substance that costs more than $4,000 per kilo and can only be found as an aromatic in small quantities within grapefruits. Nootkatone is used in many different industries for a variety of different things. It can work as an insecticide, actively works against cancer cell lines in medicines, it has a nice smell for beauty products, and is even used in soft drinks for a subtle taste.  

"We have installed new genetic information in the yeast Pichia pastoris, so that our cells are able to produce Nootkatone from sugar," says Austrian Centre of Industrial Biotechnology lab reasearcher Tamara Wrlessnegger. The yeast cells had their genomes altered with the addition of four foreign genes from the cress Arabidopsis thaliana, the Egyptian henbane Hyoscyamus muticus, the Nootka cypress Xanthocyparis nootkatensis and yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The aroma from a single grapefruit is then used to create millions of liters of this functional juice. 

I think the use of synthetic biology to solve the problem of acquiring this expensive substance is brilliant. Not only is the industrial and monetary value from an experiment like this great but it give these researchers a chance to perform a practical application of using cells to produce compounds for everyday use. This reminded me of a recent genetics video where scientists used E. coli to produce synthetic spider silk which is just another example of how synthetic biology is being used today. I hope that these types of experiments continue to provide the world with an even greater quality of life from the different substances that can be synthesized. 


Orginal Article : http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150415092837.htm

2 comments:

  1. This article was really interesting, the new techniques being developed are very ingenious. I can't wait to see what other genes they will experiment with.

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  2. This is very useful, however I am worried a little about how similar the materials produced are to the actual substance, and if it is different then are there other side effects that arise because of using the synthetic version instead of the real version.

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