Ludwigshafen-based BASF, the world's largest chemical company, has acquired the Dutch company Isobionics, which specializes in the biotechnological production of fragrances and flavors. BASF also announced its cooperation with the US company Conagen, which produces biotechnological production strains used, among other things, for the production of vanillin.

Spider silk is - in relation to its weight - more tear-resistant and stretchable than synthetic fibers made of Kevlar or carbon. For a long time now, it has also been imitated industrially and used as a material, from aircraft construction or the textile industry to medicine. However, the secret behind the special properties of silk proteins was not yet fully understood.

The international research team with scientists from the Ruhr University Bochum and the University of New South Wales in Australia were able to produce end products such as ethanol and propanol from the starting material carbon dioxide. As they report in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the researchers exploited the mechanism of enzymes that have different active centers for cascade reactions. Each active center of the enzyme specializes in certain reaction steps.

After the Second World War, Germany was quickly reforested. As a result, the domestic forests today are poor in tree species diversity and accordingly susceptible to environmental influences: Bark beetles, heat, drought, storms and fires have all plagued Germany's forests, which are dominated by spruce and beech. Experts call this a new forest dieback.

The German life science company Bayer and the U.S. developer of biopharmaceuticals Arvinas are planning to adapt molecules of the cell's own system and use them to remove foreign or no longer needed proteins in order to protect agricultural plants from pathogens, insect pests and wild herbs. To this end, both companies have now announced the foundation of the joint venture Oerth Bio (pronounced "Earth").

For some time now, it has been possible to produce carbon fiber, an important high-tech material, from renewable raw materials instead of crude oil. However, so far, the biobased version could not compete as the mechanical properties were inferior to the petroleum equivalent. Thanks to an ultra high temperature oven, this is now likely to change, as fiber specialists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer Research (IAP) in Potsdam report.