In a laboratory in Berlin, researchers are engineering bacteria to do what fossil fuels have done for a century—feed the global chemical industry—except with nearly zero carbon footprint. The CarboNcare project, led by Dr. Steffen Lindner-Mehlich at Charité—Universitätsmedizin Berlin, is developing a biological shortcut: genetically reprogrammed bacteria that convert methanol derived from captured CO₂ into the chemical building blocks that make everything from lipsticks to tire rubber to medicine tablets.
The motivation is urgent. The chemical industry remains anchored to finite resources—crude oil, natural gas, and coal—producing plastics, cosmetics, medicines, and countless other products that shape daily life. Alternative approaches have pivoted to sugar and biomass, but that strategy carries its own cost: vast land requirements that compete directly with food production. The CarboNcare team is pursuing something different: complete decoupling from both fossil fuels and plant-based resources.
"Our goal is to decouple chemical production from both fossil and plant-based resources," Lindner-Mehlich explains. The ambition is to create a closed carbon cycle—one where CO₂ released when a plastic product is burned at end-of-life becomes the feedstock for manufacturing that same product anew. Methanol, a cornerstone chemical already producible from atmospheric CO₂ using existing technology, serves as the starting point. The real innovation lies in what comes next.
The researchers are genetically reprogramming two bacterial workhorses already used in industry—Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas putida—to consume methanol and excrete lactate, succinate, and 2,3-butanediol. These three intermediates are the hidden ingredients in products most people never think about: lactate strengthens tablet coatings in medicines, succinate preserves food and enhances flavor, and butanediol appears in bioplastics, cosmetics like creams and lipsticks, and rubber for tire production. Rather than simply modifying the bacteria's genes, the team has engineered a clever metabolic trick: linking bacterial growth directly to chemical production. If the bacteria want to grow, they must simultaneously produce the desired molecule. This ensures higher yields while making the process robust enough for industrial deployment.
The challenge lies in optimization. Bacteria naturally prioritize their own survival and reproduction over manufacturing anything else. Computer simulations of biochemical pathways will precede actual genetic modifications, and the entire fermentation process is being designed with industrial scalability as a core principle—analyzed not just for yield but for environmental footprint and economic viability. Eight European partners across science and industry are collaborating to transform this laboratory concept into a viable manufacturing reality.
The market opportunity speaks to the potential impact. The global lactate market alone reached €2.9 billion in 2021 and continues expanding. Scaling this approach across the full spectrum of chemical intermediates could reshape how the world produces everyday essentials. "We want to develop a seriously viable and sustainable alternative to the established production methods in the chemical industry," Lindner-Mehlich emphasizes, "so that plastics, cosmetics, and other everyday products can be manufactured in a climate-neutral manner in the future."