Plastic-eating enzyme could eliminate billions of tons of landfill waste

Scientists at The University of Texas have created a new enzyme variant can break down polluting plastics that would typically take many hundreds of years to break down in, just a matter of hours. The project focused on polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a widely used polymer found in a considerable amount of consumer packaging, such as squash bottles, fruit and salad packaging, and some types of fibres and textiles. PET is thought to account for 12% of all global waste. The enzyme was able to break down these plastics into their monomers in as little as 24 hours. The researchers used a machine learning program to generate novel mutations to a natural enzyme called PETase that allows bacteria to degrade PET plastics. The model predicts which mutations in these enzymes is the most likely to depolymerize the plastic at room temperatures. The new mutation contains five mutations compared to wild-type PETase. Once the simulations are done the enzyme can be synthesised and tried out. Research on enzymes for recycling plastics like PET have advanced a lot during the past 15 years. However, until now, no one had been able to work out how to make enzymes that can operate efficiently at low temperatures on a large industrial scale. The new enzyme FAST-PETase can perform the recycling process at less than 50 degrees Celsius. 

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04599-z



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