E-Mail Credit: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute TROY, N.Y. -- Envisioning an animal-free drug supply, scientists have -- for the first time -- reprogrammed a common bacterium to make a designer polysaccharide molecule used in pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals. Published today in Nature Communications, the researchers modified E. coli to produce chondroitin sulfate, a drug best known as a dietary supplement to treat arthritis that is currently sourced from cow trachea. Genetically engineered E. coli is used to make a long list of medicinal proteins, but it took years to coax the bacteria into producing even the simplest in this class of linked sugar molecules -- called sulfated glycosaminoglycans --that are often used as drugs and nutraceuticals..