Biochemists Are Turning Genetically Modified Yeast Into Perfume and Opioids

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Yeast. Is there nothing it can’t do? Scoop it up from nature and it makes alcohol. Fiddle with the genes and you can coax it to produce gasoline. Useful, but such synbio projects tend not to be cost-effective. Now, though, biochemists are genetically modifying yeast and algae to produce stuff with good enough profit margins that you could find it in the grocery store (or on the street corner).

Vanillin

Five years ago, scientists at a Swiss company called Evolva added genes to Saccharomyces cerevisiae so that the yeasty beasties ferment sugar into the compound that makes vanilla taste vanillish. It started selling the stuff to flavorists last year.

“Palm” Oil

Solazyme, which originally made biofuel from algae, genetically engineered the cells to produce a palm oil replacement. It’s also using unmodded algae to poop out powdery stuff that mimics the properties of milk and butter. Yum.

Opioids

Most morphine is derived from poppy plants, which—thanks for nothin’, heroin—can lead to shortages. But a Stanford team reprogrammed yeast to contain genes from poppies and other bacteria and got semi-synthetic opioids in return.

Perfume

That earthy, grassy, drift-woodsy smell in perfume? It frequently comes from a tropical grass called vetiver. But in 2012 a San Diego company called Allylix figured out how to synthetically reproduce it using yeast strains.