Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Emerging Tech
  3. News

Accidental mutant enzyme sounds scary, but it could help eliminate plastic waste

Luke Dormehl
By

Despite the public awareness drive that recycling has received in many states, the world still has a massive problem with polluting plastics. Right now there are millions of tons of unrecycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic bottles. Left alone, these will persist for hundreds of years before eventually decomposing. Researchers from the U.K.’s University of Portsmouth, the University of South Florida, and the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have engineered an enzyme that’s capable of significantly speeding up that process — by digesting the world’s most common polluting plastics.

Their “PETase” enzyme was isolated from a bacterium found in a Japanese recycling plant in 2016. Following its discovery, the project’s research team set out to explore the properties of the enzyme, which led to them inadvertently creating a mutant version that outperforms its natural counterpart. The results reduce the length of time it takes to break down PET plastics to just a matter of days.

Related Videos

At present, the mutated version of PETase is around 20 percent more efficient than the naturally occurring enzyme, but this could be improved in the future. To examine exactly how the enzyme functions, the team recently used X-rays to generate an ultra-high resolution model of the enzyme at molecular level.

Related

“We are currently in the early stages of optimizing this enzyme’s efficacy, however, our efforts are a very encouraging,” H. Lee Woodcock, associate professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of South Florida, told Digital Trends. “We were able to clearly show that PETase is both a viable mechanism for plastic biodegradation, and that it is susceptible to engineering for improved activity. We already have plans in place to continue this work and envision a multi-fold improvement in the ability to recycle plastics in the near future.”

Woodcock said that there are no immediate plans to commercialize this biotechnology, although further research will absolutely take place. “We will have full access to NREL’s facilities that will facilitate the development of a pilot scale application,” Woodcock continued. “We will then work with industrial partners to move beyond the pilot scale.”

An article describing the work was recently published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
AiroDoctor claims its four-stage air purifier can eliminate coronavirus
airodcotors four stage filter kills coronavirus airodoctor

As companies seek ways to introduce consumer-grade air purifiers that can kill the coronavirus, the main obstacle that has cropped up is the size of the virus itself. It is too small to be captured by most traditional filters, but AiroDoctor has introduced a commercially focused four-stage air purifier that uses a photocatalytic filter that it claims can destroy or neutralize viruses using UV LEDs.

The AiroDoctor uses a four-stage filter that can capture bacteria and viruses as small as 0.1 microns in size. It is capable of cleaning rooms up to 2,150 square feet with a single unit but runs at only 55 decibels. Because the AiroDoctor does not use UVC light, it doesn't produce ozone and requires no installation or HVAC integration in order to operate. This new technology means there are no dangerous byproducts from operating it, which is something that UVC filters have struggled to address.

Read more
This clever new technique could help us map the ocean floor — from the sky
pass ocean mapping stanford airbornesonarconcept

A friend of mine who works in games design recently showed me a 3D model of the Earth, rendered in great detail using topographically accurate satellite data, so that we could soar through canyons and our respective neighborhoods at high speed like a pair of joyriding Supermen. “Let’s see if we can go underwater,” he said, exhilarated, as we flew out over the Pacific.

We couldn’t. The model, so stunningly accurate on land, apparently had zero data with which to model the undersea environment. It was an unrendered void beneath the water’s glassy surface, as if this was some subaquatic version of The Truman Show, and we had reached the end of the world.

Read more
Stretchable, self-healing, recyclable device could be the future of wearables
stretchable recyclable self healing wearable f5 large

If you've got an Apple Watch or a Fitbit, you've already sampled the world of wearables. But a new development could allow wearables to become much more than wristwatches or heart monitors. A team of scientists has developed a stretchable, self-healing, recyclable wearable which could be the future of the format.

The team, consisting of researchers from both China and the U.S., has developed a new wearable that acts like real skin, allowing it to stretch as you move and to heal itself if it suffers minor damage. The wearable can be used for tasks like measuring body temperature or counting daily steps, and the teams says it could be used for health monitoring as well as being the next step for human-computer interfaces and virtual reality experiences.

Read more