6 abril 2025

Time: 11:00

Language: Portuguese

Capacity: 25 people

Access: Entrance through the Quinta gate – Rua Bartolomeu Velho, n.º 141

Panoramic Room – Quinta do Parque de Serralves

Free access, but mandatory registration via this link.

Language: Portuguese

Fluorinated Products in Daily Life, Their Impact on Environmental Health, and How Biotechnology Can Help

Fluorine is an extremely elusive chemical element. It is one of the most abundant elements in our geosphere, but it doesn’t play a significant role in biology. However, this apparent biological irrelevance contrasts with the wide variety of fluorinated chemicals that surround us daily: today, fluorine is present in our clothing, kitchen utensils, plastic packaging, and even in pharmaceuticals and pesticides. Human exposure to these synthetic molecules, whether voluntary or not, is an inevitability that largely goes unnoticed.

The favorable properties that fluorine imparts to the products and materials that incorporate it have been the foundation of the growing production and spread of fluorinated chemicals in our daily lives.

This session aims to reflect on the implications of the widespread use of synthetic fluorinated products on human and environmental health, while also considering their disruptive potential in addressing many of the challenges humanity currently faces. Lastly, it will also discuss the biotechnological advances that have enabled the functionalization of microbial metabolism for the development of fluorinated products with a more environmentally sustainable life cycle.

Researcher: Diogo Alexandrino

More on the event here.