Salk engineers first bacteria with synthetic amino acids: new platform biofuels

In California, Salk Institute researchers have developed a new strain of bacteria that may pave the way for new synthetic drugs and new ways of manufacturing medicines and biofuels.  For the first time, the scientists were able to create bacteria capable of effectively incorporating “unnatural” amino acids – artificial additions to the 20 naturally occurring amino acids used as biological building blocks – into proteins at multiple sites. This ability may provide a powerful new tool for the study of biological processes and for engineering bacteria that produce new types of synthetic chemicals.