Newly discovered deep-sea enzyme breaks down PET plastic
1–10 of 78 posts
Re: Newly discovered deep-sea enzyme breaks down PET plastic
#2Now splice this into the genome of black mold and release it in a coca-cola bottling plant.
Re: Newly discovered deep-sea enzyme breaks down PET plastic
#3Slightly misleading headline, as PET (polyethylene terephthalate) hydrolases were already known - see https://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/motm/PETase/PETaseh.htm
This is a study of an archaeal enzyme (from the deep-sea) that can degrade both long-chain and short-chain polymers that is more efficient at 70 deg C than other enzymes.
The details are that this is a feruloyl esterase with a conserved alpha/beta-hydrolase fold but with an additional flexible 'lid' domain that covers the active site. The authors suggest this lid domain replaces the conserved Trp that is an Ala in the archaeal enzyme.
Re: Newly discovered deep-sea enzyme breaks down PET plastic
#4Now splice this into the genome of black mold and release it in a coca-cola bottling plant.
Don't laugh, someday a terrorist or hacker may engineer a fast-eating critter, and half our stuff will become useless in a year. Termites learned to work with gut microbes to speed up wood munching, a home-owner's biggest nightmare.
Re: Newly discovered deep-sea enzyme breaks down PET plastic
#5Now splice this into the genome of black mold and release it in a coca-cola bottling plant.
Don't laugh, someday a terrorist or hacker may engineer a fast-eating critter, and half our stuff will become useless in a year. Termites learned to work with gut microbes to speed up wood munching, a home-owner's biggest nightmare.
That's still kind of funny in a existential hysteria kind of way.
Re: Newly discovered deep-sea enzyme breaks down PET plastic
#6So dumping all our plastic in the sea will work out! /s
It seems like these discoveries are coming quickly and in higher numbers. Maybe there's hope in recycling/processing plastics down simpler molecules after all. Currently, recycling plastic is a bit of a lie -- very little of it is actually recycled.
Re: Newly discovered deep-sea enzyme breaks down PET plastic
#7So dumping all our plastic in the sea will work out! /s It seems like these discoveries are coming quickly and in higher numbers. Maybe there's hope in recycling/processing plastics down simpler molecules after all. Currently, recycling plastic is a bit of a lie -- very little of it is actually recycled.
I'm fearing that degradable plastics is also a lie.. is it just turning it into microplastics small enough that the problem visually disappears?
Re: Newly discovered deep-sea enzyme breaks down PET plastic
#8Slightly misleading headline, as PET (polyethylene terephthalate) hydrolases were already known - see https://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/motm/PETase/PETaseh.htm This is a study of an archaeal enzyme (from the deep-sea) that can degrade both long-chain and short-chain polymers that is more efficient at 70 deg C than other enzymes. The details are that this is a feruloyl esterase with a conserved alpha/beta-hydrolase fold but…
Yeah, it's not bad news at all but it appears to be one of many that still require considerable heat, industrial infra, etc.
Has anyone attempted to put these enzymes to the test in at some scale in an industrial setting, I wonder?
Re: Newly discovered deep-sea enzyme breaks down PET plastic
#9Now splice this into the genome of black mold and release it in a coca-cola bottling plant.
Less fun, PET is heavily used in medical devices including implants. There's a huge cut to life expectancy if it becomes a secondary food source for something like an engineered MSRA strain.
Re: Newly discovered deep-sea enzyme breaks down PET plastic
#10[dead]