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November 30, 2019 10:34 pm

Genetically-Engineered Microbe No Longer Needs to Eat Food To Grow

"Synthetic biologists have performed a biochemical switcheroo," reports Science magazine:They've re-engineered a bacterium that normally eats a diet of simple sugars into one that builds its cells by absorbing carbon dioxide (CO2), much like plants. The work could lead to engineered microbes that suck CO2 out of the air and turn it into medicines and other high-value compounds. "The implications of this are profound," says Dave Savage, a biochemist at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved with the work. Such advances, he says, could "ultimately make us change the way we teach biochemistry...." In all, the evolved bacteria picked up 11 new genetic mutations that allowed them to survive without eating other organisms, the team reports today in Cell. "It really shows how amazing evolution can be, in that it can change something so fundamental as cellular metabolism," Milo says. "The bacteria were given just enough sugar so they wouldn't starve to death," explains long-time Slashdot reader Tangential, "but had access to plenty of CO2 and formate. "The process of evolution says that life finds a way to cope with stressful conditions like these, and some of the bacteria soon turned to the CO2 as a food source."

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