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Natural Brilliant Blue Food Coloring Wrung Out of Red Cabbage

posted by martyb on Sunday April 11 2021, @06:03PM   
from the blue-goo dept.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for AzumaHazuki:

Natural brilliant blue food coloring wrung out of red cabbage:

For decades, concerns have been raised about the safety of synthetic food dyes, and while the evidence against them is still unclear, natural colorings are generally preferred. Most of these pigments are sourced from plants, although a few come from crushed insects. But frustratingly, not all colors are easy to find in these places.

"Blue colors are really quite rare in nature – a lot of them are really reds and purples," says Pamela Denish, an author of the new study.

[...] As you might expect, most of the anthocyanins in red cabbage are red or purple, but there are tiny amounts of blue in there too. After about a decade of trying, a team of scientists from a range of institutions and food companies has now managed to extract useful amounts of blue by converting other anthocyanins.

Doing so required exactly the right enzyme, so the team screened a library of millions of them, and used computational simulations to explore about 100 quintillion potential protein sequences. Eventually, they were able to design the perfect enzyme for the job of converting the red and purple anthocyanins into blue ones.

The end result, the team says, is a natural cyan dye equivalent to the widely used synthetic FD&C Blue No. 1.

Journal Reference:
Pamela R. Denish, Julie-Anne Fenger, Randall Powers, et al. Discovery of a natural cyan blue: A unique food-sourced anthocyanin could replace synthetic brilliant blue [open], Science Advances (DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abe7871)

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Original Submission

• Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart; Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart; (Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 11 2021, @06:12PM (1 child)

  by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 11 2021, @06:12PM (#1136075)

  Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;
  Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art
  Thou my best Thought, by day or by night,
  Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

  Be Thou my Wisdom, and Thou my true Word;
  I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord;
  Thou my great Father, I Thy true son;
  Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.

  Be Thou my battle Shield, Sword for the fight;
  Be Thou my Dignity, Thou my Delight;
  Thou my soul's Shelter, Thou my high Tower:
  Raise Thou me heavenward, O Power of my power.

  Riches I heed not, nor man's empty praise,
  Thou mine Inheritance, now and always:
  Thou and Thou only, first in my heart,
  High King of Heaven, my Treasure Thou art.

  High King of Heaven, my victory won,
  May I reach Heaven's joys, O bright Heaven's Sun!
  Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
  Still be my Vision, O Ruler of all.

  Starting Score:	0		points
  Moderation		-1
  Spam=1, Total=1
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• Re:Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart; (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 11 2021, @10:07PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 11 2021, @10:07PM (#1136141)

  The Lord Is My Shepherd
  Spam

  Turn The Other Cheek
  Spam

  Let He Who Is without Sin Cast the First Stone
  Spam

  Smite, smite, smite, smite...
  +3 Insightful

  Parent