Scientists recently engineered an enzyme that can digest certain polluted plastics. This could help provide a budding solution to the huge environmental problem of recycling plastic bottles, according to Science Daily. Plastic bottles composed of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) preserves in the environment for hundreds of years.
Professor John McGeehan from the University of Portsmouth and Dr. Gregg Beckham at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory cracked the case of the crystal structure of PETase, a new mutant enzyme that actually digests PET. They used 3D information, and unintentionally, engineered an enzyme that degraded plastic better than the naturally evolved one.
The two published their findings in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Initially, the researchers were examining the natural PETase enzyme, which may have evolved from a waste recycling center in Japan where the waste allowed the bacterium to destroy plastic as a food source. The objective of their research was to determine the structure of the organic enzyme, but they accidently created an enzyme that was even better at breaking down plastics.
Currently, the researchers are taking their findings one step further by engineering the enzyme to industrially break down plastics in just a fraction of the time.
The team will start to apply tools of protein engineering and evolution to continue the enzyme’s progression. Scientists at the Diamond Light Source, the University of Portsmouth and NREL have helped this progression by using their laboratory beamline I23, to generate an ultra-high-resolution 3D model of the PETase enzyme.
With intricate detail provided by the beamline, the researchers have begun to delve into important information for adapting the enzyme to perform large-scale industrial recycling methods.
Currently, the mutant enzyme can also break down polyethylene furandicarboxylate (PEF), a bio-based replacement for PET plastics for glass beer bottles.
For now, they continue to push their enzyme to reach new heights of discovering information for the benefits of the environment.
Professor McGeehan, Director of the Institute of Biological and Biomedical Sciences said few would have predicted the outbreak of plastics that are not being recycled. They now ruin the once scenic view and cover prestigious landscapes and beaches everywhere.
“We can all play a significant part in dealing with the plastic problem, but the scientific community who ultimately created these ‘wonder-materials’, must now use all the technology at their disposal to develop real solutions,” says McGeehan, according to Science Daily.
