France 24 | April 23, 2018<\/p>\n
Scientists in Britain and the United States say they have engineered a plastic-eating enzyme that could help in the future fight against pollution.<\/p>\n
The enzyme is able to digest polyethylene terephthalate, or PET – a form of plastic patented in the 1940s and now used in millions of tonnes of plastic bottles. PET plastics can persist for hundreds of years in the environment and currently pollute large areas of land and sea worldwide.<\/p>\n
Researchers from Britain\u2019s University of Portsmouth and the U.S. Department of Energy\u2019s National Renewable Energy Laboratory made the discovery while examining the structure of a natural enzyme thought to have evolved in a waste recycling centre in Japan.<\/p>\n
Finding that this enzyme was helping a bacteria to break down, or digest, PET plastic, the researchers decided to \u201ctweak\u201d its structure by adding some amino acids, said John McGeehan, a professor at Portsmouth who co-led the work.<\/p>\n
This led to a serendipitous change in the enzyme\u2019s actions – allowing its plastic-eating abilities to work faster.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve made an improved version of the enzyme better than the natural one already,\u201d McGeehan told Reuters in an interview. \u201cThat\u2019s really exciting because that means that there\u2019s potential to optimise the enzyme even further.\u201d<\/p>\n
The team, whose finding was published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, is now working on improving the enzyme further to see if they can make it capable of breaking down PET plastics on an industrial scale.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s well within the possibility that in the coming years we will see an industrially viable process to turn PET, and potentially other (plastics), back into their original building blocks so that they can be sustainably recycled,\u201d McGeehan said.<\/p>\n
\u2018Strong potential\u2019<\/p>\n
Independent scientists not directly involved with the research said it was exciting, but they cautioned that the enzyme\u2019s development as a potential solution for pollution was still at an early stage.<\/p>\n
\u201cEnzymes are non-toxic, biodegradable and can be produced in large amounts by microorganisms,\u201d said Oliver Jones, a expert in analytical chemistry at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University. \u201cThere is strong potential to use enzyme technology to help with society\u2019s growing waste problem by breaking down some of the most commonly used plastics.\u201d<\/p>\n
Douglas Kell, a professor of bioanalytical science at Manchester University, said further rounds of work \u201cshould be expected to improve the enzyme yet further\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll told, this advance brings the goal of sustainably recyclable polymers significantly closer,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
France 24 | April 23, 2018 Scientists in Britain and the United States say they have engineered a plastic-eating enzyme that could help in the future fight against pollution. The enzyme is able to digest polyethylene terephthalate, or PET – a form of plastic patented in the 1940s and now used in millions of tonnes of plastic bottles. PET plastics… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1634"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1635,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1634\/revisions\/1635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}