Blue dye photo by the authors

New Blue: Natural Cyan Blue Coloring Could Replace Synthetic Brilliant Blue

Blue coloring in nature is difficult to find; however, there is consumer demand for natural food coloring. Research conducted by Denish et al. (2021) in Science Advances describes the discovery of a cyan blue anthocyanin-based colorant. Synthetic biology and computational protein design tools were leveraged to develop an enzymatic transformation of red cabbage anthocyanins into the desired anthocyanin. This newly discovered cyan blue colorant could replace FD&C Blue No. 1.

Read the full article in Science Advances.

Read the press release on UCD here.

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