Last year, we shared the sad impact of plastic pollution on some of the most beautiful places on our planet. With recycling without turning out to be the liberator designed to be, solutions to our growing plastic problem can look remote and complex. folded.
We have seen some eyes from both human innovation and nature itself, however. In 2016, bacteria that came up with the ability to break down plastic were discovered in a Japanese waste site. Two years later, scientists invented the eating enzyme mutant plastic called PETase – named for polyethylene terephthalate, the most common plastic found in bottles and food packaging – in a laboratory.
Here’s an explanation of how these enzymes work:
Eliminating plastic contamination with design bacteria
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Now researchers have unveiled another play machine in the plastic cutter – a super-enzyme that can break down plastic six times faster than PETase alone.
The super-enzyme is a bit of a frankenzyme, created by binding different enzymes together. “When we linked the enzymes, to an unexpected level, we saw a huge increase in activity,” Dr John McGeehan, of the University of Portsmouth, UK, told the Guardian. this towards trying to produce a faster enzyme that is more relevant to business. But it’s also one of those stories about learning from nature, and then being introduced to the lab. “
This new research was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Mixture of enzymes could be a key means of recycling various types of plastics and related materials. “There’s a lot of potential,” McGeehan said. “We have hundreds in the lab that we’re sticking together right now.”
For example, combining the plastic eating enzyme with an existing enzyme that breaks down natural materials could result in the recycling of clothing made from mixed materials, McGeehan told him. the Guardian. “Mixed stuff [of polyester and cotton] they are extremely difficult to recycle. We have been talking to some of the big fashion companies that make these clothes, because they are very popular right now. “
This latest research is not the first to develop a discovery of plastic-eating bacteria. In April, a French chemical company called Carbios shared their own mutant enzyme that can disinfect 90% of plastic bottles within 10 hours. However, that enzyme, first found in a clump of compost leaves, needs to heat above 70 degrees Celsius (nearly 160 degrees Fahrenheit), but this new super-enzyme works at room temperature .
It’s not that it’s cutthroat competition. We are talking about helping the whole planet and saving lives as we know it, after all. McGeehan suggested that the researchers work with the private sector to make the enzymes work out in the real world. “If we can make a better, faster enzyme by linking them together and giving them to companies like Carbios, and working in partnership, we could start to do this internally the next year or two, “McGeehan told the Guardian.
McGeehan confirmed to CNN that the super-enzyme is “still far too slow” to become commercially viable at this stage, but it is a major step in the process. “It surprised us that it worked so well,” he told CNN.
This is to science coming up with solutions to the problems that human scientific advances have created, and this to learning to live in a better balance with nature in the process.
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