An enzyme that digests plastic could boost recycling
A MILLION plastic bottles are sold every minute. Many are not recycled and of those that are, only a small fraction become bottles again. That is, in part, because recycling polyethylene terephthalate (PET), the polymer used to make such bottles, back into material robust enough to hold, say, a fizzy drink, is hard. What would be helpful is a way to break down PET into the chemicals that made it in the first place. These could then be used to make new high-grade PET.
This week John McGeehan of the University of Portsmouth, in Britain, and his colleagues report details of a bacterial enzyme called “PETase” that can do just that. Furthermore, they have engineered a version of this enzyme that can digest plastic faster than the natural variety. Their work is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
PETase is secreted by a plastic-munching bacterium called Ideonella sakaiensis 201-F6. This bug was discovered in 2016 at a PET-bottle...Continue reading