Plastics produced by bacterial fermentation are degradable in many different environ-ments and comprised of renewable resources, making them a "green" alternative to their petroleum-based cousins. A major barrier to commercialization, however, is their high cost. Producing these biopolymers in genetically engineered plants has long been viewed as a way of reducing these costs, but progress has been slow. Now in this issue, Gruys and colleagues describe synthesis of a particularly useful plastic in plants, by engi-neering four bacterial genes to modify two different metabolic pathways ( see p. 1011 and Research News p. 960 ).
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DeWitt, N. Just one word—plastics. Nat Biotechnol 17, 943 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/13624
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/13624