How exactly flowers produce their colours has long been something of a mystery. A team of ZHAW researchers has now made a crucial discovery, making it possible to imitate this process and use it for industrial production.

Natural plant pigments used for red, purple or blue dye are often extracted from plants such as red cabbage, purple sweet potatoes and black carrots. However, this practice isn’t sustainable and depends on the availability of the raw materials. This is why researchers have long been researching a method to produce so-called anthocyanins – from the Greek words “anthos” (flower) and “kyanos” (blue) – with the help of microorganisms. A team at the Institute of Chemistry and Biotechnology in the ZHAW School of Life Sciences and Facility Management has now set up a baker’s yeast cell factory to produce anthocyanins. The researchers had previously uncovered a crucial step in the biosynthesis of anthocyanins. They discovered that an enzyme that was thought to be a transfer protein is also involved in the biosynthesis process. Their groundbreaking discovery was published in the renowned journal Nature Catalysis