New Bacterium Lives On Caffeine

Kozar_The_Malignant writes "A newly-described species of bacterium, Pseudomonas putida has been found to live on pure caffeine. The little jaspers metabolize caffeine into carbon dioxide and ammonia. They were found living in a flower bed on the University of Iowa campus, not in the drain of an espresso machine as one might expect. The paper presenting the research will be presented at the American Society for Microbiology meeting in New Orleans this month where caffeine metabolism will have to contend with the traditional ethanol metabolism."

Comments

We must be related

[toygeek]

But when I ingest caffeine it just makes my pee smell like coffee.

Hard to Find at First

[tarsi210]

Word is they were pretty hard to find at first, on account of them vibrating right off the slide.

There's also a slime mold that lives on caffeine.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called the Sales Department.

But...

[MrEricSir]

...are they good programmers?

Re:But...

[MachDelta]

No, but they don't need to be. This is the million-monkeys problem: I'm sure a few trillion bacteria would eventually crank out better code than the mouth-breathing jackass two cubicles over.

Of course you know, this means war.

[rebelwarlock]

You can't just go around metabolizing people's caffeine and expect no retribution. We need that caffeine to survive boring meetings.

Nuuuuuu!

[osu-neko]

Kill it! Kill it with fire! It must be stopped! Don't let it take our caffeine!

Re:Great

[digitig]

Fizzy ammonia doesn't do it for me.

better "department"

[corbettw]

from the spit-it-out-you-wee-bastard department

P. putida is definitely NOT a "new species."

[mevans86]

Come on, Slashdot! Pseudomonas putida is not new! Chemists have been using it for the biochemical oxidation of aromatic compounds for decades. The CBB5 designator, as boring as it is, is the new species identifier.