The first caffeine-‘addicted’ bacteria

Their report in the journ­al ACS Syn­thet­ic Bio­logy describes bac­teria being ​“addicted” to caf­feine in a way that prom­ises prac­tic­al uses ran­ging from decon­tam­in­a­tion of wastewa­ter to biopro­duc­tion of med­ic­a­tions for asthma. Jef­frey E. Bar­ri­ck and col­leagues note that caf­feine and related chem­ic­al com­pounds have become import­ant water pol­lut­ants due to wide­spread use in cof­fee, soda pop, tea, energy drinks, chocol­ate and cer­tain med­ic­a­tions. These include pre­scrip­tion drugs for asthma and oth­er lung dis­eases. The sci­ent­ists knew that a nat­ur­al soil bac­teri­um, Pseudo­mo­nas putida CBB5, can actu­ally live solely on caf­feine and could be used to clean up such envir­on­ment­al con­tam­in­a­tion. So they set out to trans­fer genet­ic gear for meta­bol­iz­ing, or break­ing down, caf­feine from P. putida into that old work­horse of bio­tech­no­logy, E. coli, which is easy to handle and grow. The study reports their suc­cess in doing so, as well as use of the E. coli for decaf­fein­a­tion and meas­ur­ing the caf­feine con­tent of bever­ages. It describes devel­op­ment of a syn­thet­ic pack­et of genes for break­ing down caf­feine and related com­pounds that can be moved eas­ily to oth­er microbes. When engin­eered into cer­tain E. coli, the res­ult was bac­teria lit­er­ally addicted to caf­feine. The genet­ic pack­et could have applic­a­tions bey­ond envir­on­ment­al remedi­ation, the sci­ent­ists say, cit­ing poten­tial use as a sensor to meas­ure caf­feine levels in bever­ages, in recov­ery of nutri­ent-rich byproducts of cof­fee pro­cessing and for the cost-effect­ive biopro­duc­tion of medi­cines. The author and co-authors acknow­ledge fin­an­cial sup­port from the Uni­ver­sity of Texas at Aus­tin and the Uni­ver­sity of Iowa.

About the Amer­ic­an Chem­ic­al Society

The Amer­ic­an Chem­ic­al Soci­ety is a non­profit organ­iz­a­tion chartered by the U.S. Con­gress. With more than 163,000 mem­bers, ACS is the world’s largest sci­entif­ic soci­ety and a glob­al lead­er in provid­ing access to chem­istry-related research through its mul­tiple data­bases, peer-reviewed journ­als and sci­entif­ic con­fer­ences. Its main offices are in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., and Colum­bus, Ohio.

Ori­gin­al publication:

​“Decaf­fein­a­tion and Meas­ure­ment of Caf­feine Con­tent by Addicted Escheri­chia coli with a Refact­ored N‑Demethylation Oper­on from Pseudo­mo­nas putida CBB5”, ACS Syn­thet­ic Bio­logy Source: Amer­ic­an Chem­ic­al Society