Posted on 06/26/2025 11:30:23 AM PDT by Red Badger
A common bacterium can be adapted to convert plastic waste into paracetamol, a study published this week in Nature Chemistry1 reports.
Paracetamol, also known as acetaminophen, is widely used to treat pain and fever. It is produced from molecules derived from fossil fuels, but researchers are working to develop processes that use more sustainable source molecules, such as plastic waste.
“We’re able to transform a prolific environmental and societal waste into such a globally important medication in a way that’s completely impossible using chemistry alone or using biology alone,” says co-author Stephen Wallace, a chemical biotechnologist at the University of Edinburgh, UK.
Central to the project’s success was the discovery by Wallace and his team that a synthetic chemical reaction that typically requires conditions that are toxic to cells can occur in their presence. The reaction, called the Lossen rearrangement, has been known for over a century, but had previously been observed only in a test tube or a flask, says Wallace.
Plastic unpacked
To convert plastic waste into paracetamol, the researchers used conventional chemical methods to degrade and modify polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a plastic used in food packaging and textiles, into a precursor molecule. They added this molecule into bacterium Escherichia coli cell culture, where the Lossen rearrangement transformed it into a biologically relevant molecule. The reaction also occurred, to a lesser extent, in the experiment's negative control, which contained only the precursor molecule and growth medium. The team later discovered that phosphate, an ion found in all organisms, catalyzed the reaction.
The authors also modified the E. coli, introducing the genes for enzymes able to catalyse reactions that use the product of the Lossen rearrangement. The enzymes produced by the modified E. coli carried out the remaining synthetic steps needed to create paracetamol.
(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...
Tylenol makes me, and millions of others, sick.
I thought we were trying to reduce plastic from the environment? They were even trying to develop a synthetic plastic from plants to keep it out of our systems.
I have aspirin growing on trees where I live.
Fortunately, I can count the number of Tylenol products I have taken in the past 40 years on one hand. My concern was always liver toxicity. Now I can add microplastics and E. coli.
I just had my stomach rebuilt thanks to acetiminophen and Ibuprofen. If you have pain, go see your doctor and get the real drugs, Oxy works wonders
Yikes! That’s not good. Maybe new quality control practices?
I took Tylenol once- nothing happened so I went back to an occasional aspirin. I just didn’t trust the others. It’s rare that I need pain meds, I seem to have a tolerance for pain but I remember childbirth got my attention lol.
Recycled plastics broken down by bacteria from feces appears to be the new "sustainable" formula for making APAP.
Beyond that, words fail me.
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