Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

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

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)


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 11 2021, @06:43PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 11 2021, @06:43PM (#1136090)

    That's a beautiful hymn, thanks for posting it! I love God so much.

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   -1  
       Offtopic=1, Troll=1, Interesting=1, Total=3
    Extra 'Offtopic' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   -1