Insect genes to make crops drip lube
Australian researchers hope to insert plant and insect genes into crops to 'farm' industrial chemicals including super-lubricants, adhesives, sensors, antibacterials and stretch-Kevlar.
"We're expressing chemicals in plants that aren't normally there that could be extracted to provide something very valuable," says Dr Mike O'Shea of CSIRO Molecular and Health Technologies in Clayton.
O'Shea, who thinks this research is the first of its kind, and colleagues present their progress this week at the World Congress on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioprocessing in Chicago.
O'Shea says the genes would eventually be inserted into an oilseed crop like safflower to mass-produce new industrial chemicals that are currently only available in experimental quantities.
The new chemicals include fatty acids that can be polymerised to produce ultra-slippery lubricants, he says.
These include those that O'Shea says are more slippery than castor oil, an important lubricant that comes from the castor oil tree.
But he says this tree is not suitable for large-scale industrial production and current supplies rely on peasant farmers in India.
The new fatty acids can also be used to produce conductive polymers that change colour in response to temperature or light, says O'Shea.
These could be used in flexible electronics or sensors in food packaging to record if a food has been exposed to excessive light or temperature, he says.
They could also be used as strain gauges to see if cables or parachutes, for example, have reached their stretch limit.
O'Shea says other related novel compounds the team is working on show promising antibacterial activity against Staphylococcus aureus.
"When we had those tested by external labs, people virtually jumped across the desk at us and said 'what is this stuff?'" he says.
The team is also working with fatty acids that can produce strong polyurethane adhesives, says O'Shea.
O'Shea's colleague, Dr Victoria Hartisos from CSIRO Entomology in Canberra, is working on producing bee silk in crops.
O'Shea says this silk, which bees normally produce to build honeycomb, has properties that lie between Kevlar and Lycra.
He says previous researchers have put spider silk genes in goats in the hope of harvesting the silk from the milk, but using crops as factories makes it easier to mass produce.
The researchers have a number of patents on the technology and are seeking commercial partners.