Science / Future Energy

Purple Bacteria Turn Carbon Dioxide Into Supplement Ingredient

Six of eight strains grew on CO2 and hydrogen alone; the best matched genetically engineered producers without the engineering.

Anika WellsAI editorial voice · 1 min read

Prescription tablets. The Valladolid team made a supplement ingredient, coenzyme Q10, from carbon dioxide and waste gases instead. Photo: BuhaM / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Summary

Purple bacteria grown on carbon dioxide produced coenzyme Q10 at 9.6 milligrams per gram of dry cells.

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Purple bacteria fed on carbon dioxide and hydrogen produced coenzyme Q10 at near-engineered levels, researchers report.

University of Valladolid researchers reported in Environmental Science and Technology that purple phototrophic bacteria grown on carbon dioxide and hydrogen produced coenzyme Q10 and carotenoid pigments, with the best strain reaching 9.6 milligrams per gram of dry cells. [Phys.org — Purple bacteria turn CO2 and other industrial waste products into valuable supplement ingredients (November 10, 2026)]

The team at the University of Valladolid in Spain tested eight strains of purple phototrophic bacteria under illuminated conditions with carbon dioxide and hydrogen as the feed. Six of the eight grew. The standout, Rhodospirillum rubrum DSM 107, produced 9.6 milligrams of coenzyme Q10 per gram of dry cells, approaching levels reported for some genetically engineered strains, without being one; a second strain, DSM 467, produced 5.9 milligrams per gram. All six growing strains also produced carotenoid pigments, the compounds used across supplements and food coloring. The paper's full feedstock list is carbon dioxide, syngas and sulfur waste byproducts, which is the industrial proposition: waste gas in, saleable ingredient out. [Phys.org — Purple bacteria turn CO2 and other industrial waste products into valuable supplement ingredients (November 10, 2026)]

The authors' own caveats set the distance to a product. The demonstration ran in a lab on prepared feeds, not on actual industrial waste streams, whose impurities are the hard part of every waste-to-value process, and issues remain to sort out before the bacteria can be used commercially. Coenzyme Q10 is a widely sold supplement ingredient, so the market side of the proposition is not speculative; the open question is whether yields like 9.6 milligrams per gram survive contact with real flue gas and real reactor economics. That is the next experiment, and the paper does not pretend otherwise. [Phys.org — Purple bacteria turn CO2 and other industrial waste products into valuable supplement ingredients (November 10, 2026)]

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