Bacteria can be used to convert plastic waste into painkillers, researchers have found, opening the possibility of a more sustainable process for producing drugs.
Chemists have discovered that E. coli can be used to produce paracetamol, also known as acetaminophen, from a material produced in the lab from plastic bottles.
"People don't realise that paracetamol comes from petroleum," said Professor Stephen Wallace, lead author of the research from the University of Edinburgh.
"What this technology shows is that by combining chemistry and biology in this way for the first time, we can produce paracetamol in a more sustainable way and clean up plastic waste from the environment at the same time."
Writing in Nature Chemistry, Wallace and his colleagues report how they discovered that a type of chemical reaction called Lossen rearrangement, a process that has never been observed in nature, was biocompatible.
In other words, it could be carried out in the presence of living cells without harming them.
The team made their discovery when they took polyethylene terephthalate (PET) – a type of plastic often found in food packaging and bottles – and using sustainable chemical methods, transformed it into a new material.
Received 26 March 2024
Accepted 02 May 2025
Published 23 June 2025
DOI https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-025-01845-5
Although the press releases will range from very select to rare, I said I'd pass...because sometimes the editors hide.
