Green Options » price increases http://greenoptions.com/tag/price-increases Posts tagged 'price increases' Fri, 26 Sep 2008 11:02:53 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 en Genomatica Turns Bacteria Into Plastic http://sustainablog.org/2008/09/26/genomatica-turns-bacteria-into-plastic/ http://sustainablog.org/2008/09/26/genomatica-turns-bacteria-into-plastic/#comments Fri, 26 Sep 2008 11:02:53 +0000 Adam Williams http://sustainablog.org/2008/09/26/genomatica-turns-bacteria-into-plastic/ Scientific American reports that like so many elements in the world, it’s all in the use and volume for whether that something, say poison or E. coli, is a friend or foe: “Escherichia coli (E. coli) can give you a severe case of food poisoning or, with a little genetic engineering, a useful plastic.”

San Diego-based scientists at Genomatica have developed the ability to manipulate bacteria into being useful to feed our societal lust for plastics, by producing “butanediol (BDO), a chemical compound used to make everything from spandex to car bumpers, thereby providing a more energy-efficient way of making it without oil or natural gas,” the article says.

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