Scientists have re-engineered an existing enzyme into a super enzyme that degrades plastic 6 times faster than previously recorded making the plastic suitable for recycling. This super-enzyme has been derived from a bacterium named PETease which has a natural ability to eat plastic and enables the complete recycling of plastic bottles.
Plastic has forever been serving as a looming menace and has contaminated the whole planet from the Arctic to the deepest ends of oceans so much so that we even consume microplastics to some extent. This new discovery which was engineered by linking two separate enzymes could potentially be a solution to the problem.
PETase was created accidentally by scientists which can digest the hard, crystalline surfaces of plastic bottles. It has now been mixed with another enzyme, MHETase to give the new super-enzyme.
“When we linked the enzymes, rather unexpectedly, we got a dramatic increase in activity,“ said Prof John McGeehan, at the University of Portsmouth, UK. “This is a trajectory towards trying to make faster enzymes that are more industrially relevant. But it’s also one of those stories about learning from nature, and then bringing it into the lab.”
The team is now examining how the enzymes can be tweaked to make them work even faster still. “There’s huge potential,” said McGeehan. “We’ve got several hundred in the lab that we’re currently sticking together.” A £1m testing centre is now being built in Portsmouth and Carbios is currently building a plant in Lyon.
This new enzyme created by linking two existing enzymes found in plastic-eating microbes, discovered at a Japanese Waste site in 2016 works at room temperature and could potentially solve the plastic problem the world faces.
This enzyme can degrade polyethylene terephthalate (PET) that is used for soft drinks and fruit juice packaging and on polyethylene furanoate (PEF) which is used to make beer bottles.