Associate professor Dae-Kyun Ro and PhD student Yang Qu, from UCalgary’s Department of Biological Sciences, think so. The team’s findings, recently published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, represent the first natural biosynthetic model for rubber production in more than 50 years of research.
Natural rubber currently represents close to 45 per cent of all global rubber consumption. Ro hopes that bioproducts, synthesized by plants and their enzymes, will eventually replace all petrochemical-based rubber.
The researchers discovered that, once a lettuce plant bolts, its stem produces milky latex containing a biopolymer from which they identified a key enzyme that this alternative can synthesize.
Though the scientific breakthrough used regular lettuce, the researchers believe future commercial production will require a different plant to ensure quantities large enough to make it economically viable. They are also hoping to use new plant sources that make producing natural rubber commercially viable both in quality and quantity, within 10 years. U