An enzyme that can chemically break down bottles and packaging that typically take centuries to degrade may be able to clean up billions of tons of plastic at landfills and other polluted sites, according to researchers at the University of Texas.
Engineers and scientists at the university’s Cockrell School of Engineering and College of Natural Sciences created the “plastic-eating enzyme” using a machine learning model to generate novel mutations to a natural enzyme called PETase.
The enzyme PETase allows bacteria to degrade PET plastics (polyethylene terephthalate) which are commonly used for packaging foods and beverages, among other things.
According to researchers, the machine learning model predicts which mutations in these enzymes would “accomplish the goal of quickly depolymerizing post-consumer waste plastic at low temperatures.”
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