It is a challenge that young researchers have been taking up with enthusiasm for years: the international student competition for synthetic biology iGEM. This year, the world championship in bioengineering celebrates its 20th anniversary. 350 teams from around the world will again travel to Boston in October to compete with their projects. Fourteen teams from colleges and universities in Germany are also entering the race for the coveted places, including young researchers from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU).

Humans, animals, plants and single-celled organisms use small biomolecules as signaling substances to send messages or trigger reactions. "Microorganisms produce a variety of such substances, and we are just beginning to understand this language," says Axel Brakhage, director of the Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology and professor at Friedrich Schiller University Jena. He and his research group have found that representatives of the bacterial genus Streptomyces are particularly capable of communication.

Already to be found in some supermarkets: glass mini-farms in which lettuce or herbs grow on several floors in a special nutrient solution without pesticides under LED light and are sold freshly harvested directly on site. This controlled and resource-conserving plant cultivation in so-called vertical farms is not only sustainable, but the yields are also significantly higher, according to experts. For companies in the food industry, urban plant cultivation thus opens up entirely new opportunities.

More than half of the materials used in the textile industry are made from fossil raw materials. Polyester and polyurethane fibers, which are cheap but energy-intensive and pollute the environment, are particularly popular. The production of bio-based chemicals on an industrial scale is now intended to drive the textile industry's turnaround toward sustainability. To this end, the Finnish specialty chemicals company UPM Biochemicals and the German outdoor specialist VAUDE have agreed on a partnership.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) has a bad reputation as a greenhouse gas. In order to achieve the climate targets, experts believe that it is far from enough to reduce emissions of the climate gas. Some of it must be permanently bound. There is great potential in the material use of CO2 as a raw material, because the carbon it contains is an important basic material for industry. Sustainable and innovative ways of using CO2 could therefore relieve the climate and benefit industry at the same time.

From prostheses to children's toys, car parts or sporting goods: The possible applications of 3D printing seem limitless and show how popular this technology has become. The range of plastics used in this process is constantly growing, and with it the potential to manufacture bio-based products from them. However, in order to print highly complex three-dimensional objects, so-called support structures are often required.

For many people, pasta is a natural part of their meals. For 250 million people worldwide, however, such food causes serious health problems. The reason: they suffer from celiac disease - an intolerance to gluten, a protein found in many types of grain. Although there are already gluten-free products on the market, the baked goods lack the right texture. This is because gluten is a gluten protein that provides stability to air bubbles in dough and bread and gives volume to pasta. Without the supporting gluten framework, the dough collapses.

With their high protein content, legumes are healthy and are now an integral part of many plant-based foods. The consumer trend toward healthy eating is causing demand for vegan foods to rise further. Seed specialist KWS Saat SE & Co. KGaA and the Berlin-based start-up company VF Nutrition GmbH, better known under the brand name vly, have now agreed a development partnership lasting several years.

Hydrothermal vents are among the few places where there is sufficient energy in the deep sea to support life. Forms of this energy are crude oil and natural gas, which are formed from deposited organic material by the high heat from the Earth's interior. A team of researchers from Bremen has now been able to demonstrate that microorganisms indigenous to hydrothermal vents use the alkanes contained in petroleum as a food source. Until now, it was only assumed that certain microbes are capable of degrading alkanes in an oxygen-free environment.

Climate change and industrialization put pressure on ecosystems worldwide - including the valuable resource soil. Especially its ability to store important greenhouse gases is being impaired. It has long been known that microorganisms play an important role in the conversion of organic carbon in the soil. However, how biological and environmental processes affect carbon storage in soils was largely unknown until now. An international team of researchers with the participation of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena now provides answers.