Could a Plastic-Eating Enzyme Help Save the Planet?

We humans produce a LOT of plastics that wind up as harmful waste, but researchers have isolated an enzyme that may help reduce the problem. Learn how in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Lauren Vogel bomb here. One of the amazing things about
our universe is that nothing really goes to waste. For instance,
you the incredible master work that you are happened to
be composed of the trash that exploded out of a supernova.

(00:22):
In every nook and cranny of the cosmos, the universe
is reorganizing and reusing. It is the great recycler. Our
planet recycles everything, water, carbon, nutrients of all kinds. So
it stands to reason that we'd be really good at
recycling stuff here on Earth. But we humans are only
so so recyclers. Take plastic. We do a great job

(00:45):
of digging up ancient deposits of carbon in order to
make the stuff, which is recycling sort of. But since
the nineteen forties, we've manufactured mind boggling amounts of a
material that will likely hang out in the environment for centuries,
kill wildlife and leaching toxic chemicals. Only about ten percent
of that is ever recycled. But in a Japanese research

(01:09):
team discovered bacteria making some inroads into plastics recycling where
we humans were failing. Poly Ethylene tariff thalate or PET
plastics are everywhere, most notably in plastic soda and water bottles,
and the bonds that hold its molecules together are very strong.
So it was something of a surprise when a colony
of these bacteria were discovered in a Japanese landfill. But

(01:32):
what's their secret? In a issue of the journal Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences, and International Group of
Researchers reported on the PET busting enzyme produced by these bacteria.
Not only did they map the structure of the enzyme,
but in the process of studying and tinkering with it,
they also made it faster. Turns out, it was all

(01:53):
a bit of an accident. Lead author Greg Beckham, senior
engineer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, said in a
press release. We hoped to determine its structure to aid
in protein engineering, but we ended up going a step
further and accidentally engineered an enzyme with improved performance at
breaking down these plastics. What we've learned is that p

(02:13):
E T A S is not yet fully optimized to
degrade PET, and now that we've shown this, it's time
to apply the tools of protein engineering and evolution to
continue to improve it. The goal of this research is
to find a way to create an enzyme that works
fast enough to break down huge amounts of pet plastic
into its component parts so it can be turned back

(02:34):
into plastic bottles. One possible solution is to plant this
mutant enzyme into bacteria that can withstand insanely high temperatures,
which might break the plastic down ten to a hundred
times quicker. Whatever it takes, y'all, we humans buy one
million plastic bottles every minute. Reduce and recycle your plastic waste.

(02:55):
But it also can't hurt to keep your fingers crossed
for these bacteria to work out. Today's episode was written
by Jesselyn Shields and produced by Tyler Clang. For more
on this and lots of other environmental topics, visit our
home planet, how stuff Works dot com.