Mutant Enzyme Recycles Plastic in Hours, Could Revolutionize Recycling Industry

I shared this because unlike all the other times these enzymes have been reported, it seems like this time is the real deal due to how quickly it can break down and the temperature it operates at.

They aim to build a demonstration plant to process hundreds of tons this year and implement industrial scale with the help of Pepsi and L'Oreal by 2024/2025.

There are many many bacterial enzymes known to be able to able to break down plastics such as PET etc. But one bottleneck has been low/slow catalytic activity, so it sounds like they passed that hurdle which is impressive!

However, a non-insignificant practical challenge is that enzymes are often very picky about what physical environment they work the best in. The pH has to be just right, as well as the temperature and even having enough metal ions present (often needed for the enzymes catalytic site). Looks like they engineered it to work at higher temps, which is another feat.

There are also challenges in scaling up recombinant enzyme production: making sure the enzyme's activity isn't affected by post-translational modifications (such as glycosylations) in the host organisms the gene will be expressed by, and making sure the enzyme maintains it's catalytic activity after it's been purified and concentrated.