A group of Chinese scientists has devised a technology to capture carbon dioxide that they hope can be used to convert the gas into lycopene, a powerful antioxidant.
Advertisement
The compound naturally gives foods such as tomatoes, watermelons and peppers their pink or red colour. It is thought to be good for bone health and may help protect against heart disease, certain types of cancer and high blood sugar.
Lycopene is widely used in the pharmaceutical, cosmetics and food industries but the existing production methods have various drawbacks.
Advertisement
For example, extracting it from natural plants is time consuming, uses many raw materials and the resulting product has impurities. Meanwhile chemical synthesis is a laborious and demanding process.
The team at Qingdao Agricultural University in Shandong province developed a synthetic biology technology that aims to get round these problems.
Advertisement