Legado das Águas represents a spectacular opportunity to develop new products from the DNA of the species found in the area.

In partnership with Mauro Rebelo, associate professor at the Biophysics Institute at UFRJ and head of the Environmental Molecular Biology Laboratory, Legado has been developing DNA sequencing work for 57 native plants for two years. With this, it has been possible to set up the largest digital database in the Atlantic Forest.

This is a pioneering and promising work in applied research, and one of the main objectives of the research is to seek proteins that may be of commercial interest to be applied in the pharmaceutical, cosmetics, and other industries.

As a result, researcher Mauro Rabelo highlights: “We managed to produce two substances of interest to the cosmetics industry, 1,2 Diol Limonene and alpha-terpineol, from r-limonene, a by-product of the orange juice industry, using microorganisms modified with genes from species found in the Atlantic Forest ”.