Researchers Create Perfume fromYeast Eating Waste

04/17/2017 - 11h55

In 2020, if everything goes as planned, the Brazilian cosmetics industry will have new raw material from an unlikely source at its disposal: scents produced by genetically modified yeast (micro-organisms similar to those found in fermented drinks) that carry the DNA of orchids and other plants from the Atlantic rainforest and grow by "eating" agricultural waste.

That is the idea at the startup Bio Bureau, established by researchers from UFRJ (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro).

Thanks to a partnership with Votorantim, the biotechnology company's team is analyzing the genetic material of over 50 plant species in a in Vale do Ribeira forest (SP).

The researchers believe that the forest's molecular diversity could be used as a base for innovative products at the industrial scale.

UFRJ professor and a partner at Bio Bureau, Mauro de Freitas Rebelo says that the firm's first request-a bacterium injected with a gene that allows it to "clean" heavy metals in a solution-was deposited in 2016.

The team's mission is to "digitize" a reserve forest. Researchers collect samples of plant species and conduct a dynamic reading of their genome.

Reading an entire genome can be arduous and expensive. The method used relies on the support of substances that function as molecular scissors, snipping and eliminating pieces of DNA that do not follow the formula required to produce proteins.

Translated by SUGHEY RAMIREZ

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