Man-made bacteria can lead to "greener" products in pharmaceuticals, agriculture

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 1 (Xinhua) -- In a feat of biotechnology, U.S. researchers have created a bacteria that can lead to cheaper and "greener" ways of manufacturing pharmaceutical, agricultural and other industrial products with the generation of less toxic waste.

Frances Arnold, professor of chemical engineering, bioengineering and biochemistry at Donna and Benjamin M. Rosen Bioengineering Center at the California Institute of Technology (CIT), and her team have produced a bacteria that can make chemical compounds of carbon and boron.

The findings were published in the journal Nature this week.

Boron, which comes from the mineral borax, an essential plant nutrient, is a common ingredient found in composite materials and fertilizers.

"We have given life a whole new building block that it did not have before," Arnold said. "This is just the beginning. We've opened a new space for biology to explore, a space that includes useful products invented by humans."

Jennifer Kan, one of the lead authors, added that researchers can use this technique to generate more proteins with specific functions. Enditem