Analyze This: Microbes can make valuable chemicals more sustainable

The secret to making some household products more eco-friendly may lurk in our own guts.

Many medicines, cosmetics and cleaning products are made with medium-chain carboxylic acids, or MCCAs. These chemical ingredients usually come from palm and coconut oil. But growing those crops has downsides for the environment. It often requires chopping down trees to clear land for farming. That destroys the homes of many wildlife species, leading to biodiversity loss.

Scientists Say: Biodiversity

“The major problem right now is how unsustainable the production of these chemicals are,” says Ian Gois. He’s a microbiologist at the University of Toronto in Canada. But some bacteria that dwell in the guts of humans and other animals produce MCCAs, Gois notes. They could be harnessed to make these chemicals in a greener way. 

One group of handy microbes are chain-elongating Read Entire Article