Published Feb. 11, 2026

cows lined up eating lettuce

Applications

  • Natural ingredients for cosmetics, nutraceuticals, and pharmaceuticals
  • Co-products from bioenergy and plant crops

Advantages/Benefits

  • Reduced livestock methane and nitrogen waste
  • Increase in the value of biomass used for bioenergy
  • May be cheaper than chemical synthesis, microbial synthesis, or purification from source organisms

Background

Gallates are plant-derived phenolic compounds widely used in cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, and food products, while arbutin is valuable due to its anti-oxidative, anti-inflammatory, anti-microbial, and anti-cancer effects. Conventional approaches to obtain them have relied on chemical synthesis or extraction from natural sources, but these methods are limited in efficiency. 

Technology Overview

Researchers at Berkeley Lab’s Joint BioEnergy Institute have engineered plants for the sustainable production of gallates/gallate esters and arbutin by redirecting the shikimate pathway with microbial enzymes targeted to plastids.

For gallate, production has been demonstrated in Arabidopsis and tobacco, and is now being tested in sorghum to assess biomass yields and potential benefits in animal feed, including reductions in methane emissions and nitrogen waste in cattle. For arbutin, researchers achieved the first engineered production in plants, with tobacco successfully converting a precursor into hydroquinone, which was then naturally glucosylated by the plant’s own enzymes. Arbutin was recovered from leaves using aqueous extraction, and the precursor 4-hydroxybenzoate has also been validated in sorghum. This technology integrates synthetic pathways into crops to create a sustainable alternative to traditional production methods, while also advancing the sustainability of crops and bioenergy agriculture.

Development Stage

Proof of Concept 

Inventors:

Status

Patent pending 

Opportunities

Available for licensing or collaborative research