{"id":224950,"date":"2025-11-12T09:06:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T15:06:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/scientists-tricked-bacteria-into-making-the-octopuss-secret-camouflage-pigment"},"modified":"2025-11-12T09:06:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T15:06:14","slug":"scientists-tricked-bacteria-into-making-the-octopuss-secret-camouflage-pigment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/scientists-tricked-bacteria-into-making-the-octopuss-secret-camouflage-pigment","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Tricked Bacteria Into Making the Octopus\u2019s Secret Camouflage Pigment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/scientists-tricked-bacteria-into-making-the-octopuss-secret-camouflage-pigment.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The team\u2019s solution hinges on a clever trick of synthetic biology called \u201cgrowth-coupled biosynthesis.\u201d Most biomanufacturing efforts try to coax microbes into making a product as a side gig. But the bacteria often resist, directing their resources toward survival instead.<\/p>\n<p>This research flipped the incentive. The scientists engineered a strain of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pseudomonas_putida\"><em>Pseudomonas putida<\/em><\/a> that could only survive if it produced xanthommatin\u2014or more precisely, if it also made a byproduct called formic acid in the process. This formate, a one-carbon molecule, fuels critical metabolic cycles. No formate, no growth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The team\u2019s solution hinges on a clever trick of synthetic biology called \u201cgrowth-coupled biosynthesis.\u201d Most biomanufacturing efforts try to coax microbes into making a product as a side gig. But the bacteria often resist, directing their resources toward survival instead. This research flipped the incentive. The scientists engineered a strain of Pseudomonas putida that could [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":599,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1902,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-224950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioengineering","category-biotech-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/599"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224950\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}