According to a report by the Central News Agency of the China News Agency on April 17, according to a research report, U.S. and British researchers have developed an enzyme that can break down plastics, which helps solve the growing problem of plastic pollution. It is reported that The report was published in the American peer-reviewed journal The Journal of the National Academy of Sciences.
Data Map: On March 3, 2018, local time, an Englishman photographed a startling scene while diving in Bali. The ocean floats a lot of plastic garbage: bottles, bags, cups, barrels, straws, etc. And other marine life are evasive. Image Credit: Visual China
According to reports, more than 8 million tons of plastics are poured into the global ocean every year. Even if most of the plastic products are recycled, they can remain in the environment for several hundred years. It is feared that the products made of petroleum will have residual toxicity and human health. Harm to the environment. Researchers have been working hard to find better methods of decomposition.
Scientists at the University of Portsmouth and the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory decided to concentrate on researching a naturally occurring bacterium found in Japan several years ago. This bacterium is called Ideonella sakaiensis and seems to eat exclusively on plastics. That is widely used in plastic bottles of polyethylene terephthalate (PET).
The report said that the researchers originally planned to analyze the structure of the bacteria to understand how one of the enzyme PETases works. However, according to reports, 'the result is that they go further and unintentionally develop an enzyme that can even more effectively decompose PET plastic.'
Researchers use ultra-strong X-rays that are 10 billion times brighter than the sun to create ultra-high-quality PETase enzyme 3D models. Scientists at the University of South Florida and Campinas, Brazil, performed computer modeling and found that PETase enzymes look very Like another kind of enzyme, that is, keratolytic enzymes found in fungi and bacteria. However, the PETase enzyme has a somewhat different place. The researchers hypothesized that this is where artificial plastics can be broken down.
Therefore, researchers have changed the active site of PETase, making it more like a keratolytic enzyme, unintentionally discovered that this variant enzyme, even more effective than the natural version of PETase in the decomposition of PET. The researchers said that they are currently further To improve this enzyme, it is hoped that it will eventually work to break down the plastic and upgrade it to the industrial level.