Think you live on caffeine? You're still no match for a newly described bitty bacteria called Pseudomonas putida CBB5. These little guys can feast on pure caffeine all day--and presumably all night--long. And researchers have now located just how they accomplish this arguably admirable feat.
Celebrated and cursed, caffeine is actually an alluring blend of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen, and the clever bacterium uses specialized enzymes as it "breaks caffeine down into carbon dioxide and ammonia," Ryan Summers, a doctoral researcher in Chemical and Biochemical Engineering at the University of Iowa, said in a prepared statement.
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