{"id":1239,"date":"2007-04-05T12:40:11","date_gmt":"2007-04-05T16:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/?p=1239"},"modified":"2007-04-17T15:19:28","modified_gmt":"2007-04-17T19:19:28","slug":"bacteria-produced-plastic-approved-and-commercialized","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/?p=1239","title":{"rendered":"Bacteria Produced Plastic Approved and Commercialized"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I usually have a healthy skepticism for anything that&#8217;s genetically modified, but this is something I&#8217;ve previously mentioned (<a href=\"http:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/?p=36\">reLink<\/a>) which I rather like: plastic produced by bacteria. In this case, however, they&#8217;re genetically-altered, so I&#8217;m a little torn.<\/p>\n<p>According to a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.technologyreview.com\/Biotech\/18489\/\">story on the MIT Technology Review site (Link)<\/a>, the uses are primarily for medical purposes . I&#8217;d rather we were using this material in things like plastic engine components or something else a bit further removed. From the article:<!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a new kind of absorbable sutures that are more flexible and far stronger than those currently on the market. The sutures are made out of a polymer produced by genetically engineered bacteria.<br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\nBeyond its use in sutures, the polyester represents a valuable new material for other medical devices.<br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\nWhat&#8217;s more, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tepha.com\/\">Tepha&#8217;s<\/a> polyester is a thermoplastic&#8211;a material that melts at a high temperature and becomes solid when cooled&#8211;and thus can be readily molded into different shapes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>As I have no clue about such things, I can only assume that the absorbable suture material cannot <em>possibly<\/em> contain any of those bacteria. The human species is already plasticizing itself, we don&#8217;t need any help in that department.<\/p>\n<p>By the way, what does this E. coli variant eat?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I usually have a healthy skepticism for anything that&#8217;s genetically modified, but this is something I&#8217;ve previously mentioned (reLink) which I rather like: plastic produced by bacteria. In this case, however, they&#8217;re genetically-altered, so I&#8217;m a little torn. According to &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/?p=1239\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-administrative"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1239\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}