ETH researchers turn bacteria into small cellulose factories
Published: Tuesday, Jul 30th 2024, 09:30
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Materials researchers at ETH Zurich have succeeded in modifying certain bacteria with UV light in such a way that they become small cellulose factories. The highly pure cellulose that is produced is suitable for use as packaging material or for textiles, for example.
The bacterium called Komagataeibacter sucrofermentans naturally produces cellulose. The disadvantage is that the bacteria need a relatively long time to do this and only produce small quantities - too little to be used industrially.
As the ETH announced on Tuesday, researchers have now succeeded in modifying the bacteria with the help of UV rays so that they produce much larger quantities of cellulose more quickly. Using a sorting system, they can also fish out those specimens that produce particularly large quantities.
Using this technique, the researchers obtained bacteria that produce 50 to 70 percent more cellulose than the wild type. Normally, a cellulose mat produced by these bacteria is only 1.5 millimetres thick and weighs between two and three milligrams. The mats of the further developed and filtered variants are almost twice as heavy and twice as thick.
The ETH researchers have already filed a patent application for their discovery. Their next step is to collaborate with companies that already produce bacterial cellulose in order to test the new mini-factories under real industrial conditions.
©Keystone/SDA
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