PERSPECTIVES
By 2050, if immediate action is not taken, 12 billion tons of plastic will end up in landfills or in the environment, especially in bodies of water, impacting the health and well-being of people and ecosystems.
Currently, traditional PET recycling and degradation technologies are slow and polluting. Given this, an alternative is the use of enzymes produced by microorganisms, however, their sensitivity to high temperatures limits their industrial application and in bioremediation.
By analyzing about a million protein sequences found in metagenomes from hydrothermal sites, this project discovered two thermostable PET-degrading enzymes that can be used in industry.
This is how I came up with the idea for this project:Science has always been an essential part of my family, the first time I entered in contact with it was when my father and brother introduced me to the scientific method, although I was just a child I started to observe the world with another eyes. From some time to now I have had the opportunity to explore different water bodies within my country, unfortunately, I have noticed that PET presence on them has been increasing alarmingly. I refuse to live in a world in which there is more plastic in the ocean than fish, so I knew that I had to do something about it, in consequence, I thought the best way to contribute in order to solve this problem was through science. At the moment the National Junior Water Prize was launched, I was reading a paper about microbial enzymatic degradation and its potential. With that in mind, I outlined a project that would make use of my knowledge in bioinformatics and the power of nature to tackle this current issue.
Discovery of Thermostable PET Degrading Enzymes from MetagenomesBy 2050, if immediate action is not taken, 12 billion tons of plastic will end up in landfills or in the envi-ronment, especially in bodies of water, impacting the health and well-being of people and ecosystems. Currently, traditional PET recycling and degradation technologies are slow and polluting. Given this, an alternative is the use of enzymes produced by microorganisms, however, their sensitivity to high temper-atures limits their industrial application and in bioremediation. By analyzing about a million protein sequences found in metagenomes from hydrothermal sites, this pro-ject discovered two thermostable PET-degrading enzymes that can be used in industry.
Programme manager ania.andersch@siwi.org +46 8 121 360 59
