Scientists from the California Institute of Technology were able to create a strain of bacteria capable of making small energy-packed carbon rings that can then be used to easily create other chemicals or materials.
Such rings, which have previously been cumbersome to create, can now be “brewed” in much of the same way as beer.
The team accomplished such a feat by engineering the enzymes of the bacteria in Frances Arnold’s laboratory, employing previous techniques that have also been used in the lab, including something called directed evolution, which was developed in the ‘90s.
In previous experiments, scientists were able to alter bacteria to produce carbon-silicon and carbon-boron bonds, which do not occur naturally.
Now, the team has managed to produce carbon rings, which similarly does not occur naturally. The bacteria responsible for this, according to Arnold, can now “churn” out the “versatile, energy-rich organic structures” which chemists and chemical engineers find difficult to create.
“With new lab-evolved enzymes, the microbes make precisely configured strained rings that chemists struggle to make.”
Kai Chen, the paper’s lead author, claims the enzymes could be engineered to make “crazy carbon rings under ambient conditions.”
“This is the first time anyone has introduced a non-native pathway for bacteria to forge these high-energy structures,” said Chen.
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