Recently, good news came from the Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Its research team successfully found a new method for biodegrading PU (polyurethane) plastics, increasing the degradation efficiency by more than 10 times. It is understood that the research team has long been committed to exploring effective ways to degrade plastics, and this time it "cracked" a PU plastic depolymerase.
Through advanced scientific research technology, they successfully obtained the crystal structure of this wild-type enzyme from nature. After in-depth research, they revealed the molecular mechanism by which the enzyme can efficiently degrade PU plastic.
Based on this major discovery, the team combined evolution-guided enzyme mining technology toNot only did they find a new wild-type PU depolymerase, but they also carried out structural optimization and molecular modification. After unremitting efforts, a double mutant with excellent performance was developed, which is an "artificial enzyme".
The degradation efficiency of polyester polyurethane by some mutants is significantly improved by nearly 11 times compared with the wild-type enzyme!It opens up a new path for the processing of waste PU plastics.
Compared with the traditional "high temperature and high pressure" physical method and "high salt and concentrated acid" chemical method, the biological method uses enzymes as degradation tools and has the significant advantages of low energy consumption and low pollution.
More importantly, biological methods can achieve multiple "cycles" of plastic degradation. After being degraded by biological enzymes, waste plastics are converted into various monomeric small molecules that make up plastics. These small molecules can be directly used for plastic regeneration, and the depolymerase can continue to perform its degradation function before being inactivated.
