Although our world today is suffering from pollution with plastic waste, mankind is unable to abandon this category of materials. A large part of the plastic made on the basis of ethylene, which is produced from crude oil and natural gas, which serves as a strong argument in favor of the production of fossil raw materials. However, the recent discovery of American scientists could change all that – they learned to ethylene in large quantities from bacteria.
Scientist and was previously known microorganisms, the natural metabolic process which is based on the absorption of sulfur and the end product is ethylene. But these bacteria are aerobes and for the life of them need clean oxygen, which in combination with the ethylene is a very volatile mix. While the bacteria colony is small, the risk is also minimal, but industrial production of ethylene in this way is almost guaranteed to lead to disaster.
Researchers from the Ohio state University, who were engaged in this task, after a series of searches went to a bacterium called Rhodospirillum rubrum. She anaerobe, lives and produces ethylene in an oxygen-free environment that has become a real boon. Scientists have carefully analyzed its metabolic response and found that can easily encourage the bacteria to the production of unexpectedly large amounts of ethylene.
The process of learning the practical application of Rhodospirillum rubrum is still at the stage of laboratory experiments, but scientists are already debating the new enzyme system with great potential. Production of polymer with no refining – just the initial stage, the future of the chemical industry over the use of biological systems, which will effectively recycle all kinds of raw materials available to us.
Source — Ohio State University