Engineers from Imperial College London and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have come up with a new way to generate solid and active substances using a combination of bacteria and yeast.
This combination was accomplished with a combination of yeast and bacteria similar to those found in kombucha – a popular beverage fortified with a symbolic culture of bacteria and yeast (SCOBY), all press releases.
The research was published in Nature’s products.
Kombucha encourages engineers
Although engineered living materials had previously been created using non-food microbes E. coli and filamentous fungi, scaling up production had been challenging as conventional technologies required workers with training and tight conditions. However, this study may have overcome these difficulties standing in the way of getting inspiration from the beloved tea kombucha.
The team of engineers, under the influence of the SCOBY kombucha’s natural method, combined baker’s yeast cells with a genetic engine with cellulose-producing bacteria called Komagataeibacter rhaeticus, which had previously been separated from the kombucha mother by the carriers. at Imperial College London, doing “Syn-SCOBY”. Thus they were able to create a mutually beneficial symbiotic culture.
Because they used a laboratory type of yeast, they were able to engineer the cells to produce an enzyme that shines in the dark or senses the pollution of the environments. The yeast can also be programmed to break down the target molecules after detection, press releases states.
In addition, the kombucha-style culture has simple growth conditions that make it a favorable engineering living materials system. The researchers said that anyone can do this in their kitchen without being an expert. “You just need sugar, you need tea to provide the nutrients, and you need a piece of Syn-SCOBY mother.” Tzu-Chieh Tang, an MIT graduate student, said one of the paper’s lead authors.
SEE ALSO: HOW GOOD IS KOMBUCHA?
The material has the potential to find diverse applications in pollution detection. It could even be used to deliver nutrition or release therapeutic therapy in response to stimuli, researchers say.
“We look forward to a future where diverse products can be grown at home or in local production facilities, using biology rather than resource-intensive centralized manufacturing,” says co-professor -connected in electrical engineering and computer science and biological engineering at MIT.