Cui Ziyu, Kawada Masamu, Hui Yue, Sim Seunghyun
Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of California Irvine, California 92697, United States.
Department of Chemistry, University of California Irvine, California 92697, United States.
bioRxiv. 2024 Jul 19:2024.07.16.603759. doi: 10.1101/2024.07.16.603759.
Enzymatic degradation of plastics is a sustainable approach to addressing the growing issue of plastic accumulation. The primary challenges for using enzymes as catalysts are issues with their stability and recyclability, further exacerbated by their costly production and delicate structures. Here, we demonstrate an approach that leverages engineered spores that display target enzymes in high density on their surface to catalyze aliphatic polyester degradation and create self-degradable materials. Engineered spores display recombinant enzymes on their surface, eliminating the need for costly purification processes. The intrinsic physical and biological characteristics of spores enable easy separation from the reaction mixture, repeated reuse, and renewal. Engineered spores displaying lipases completely degrade aliphatic polyesters and retain activity through four cycles, with full activity recovered through germination and sporulation. Directly incorporating spores into polyesters results in robust materials that are completely degradable. Our study offers a straightforward and sustainable biocatalytic approach to plastic degradation.
酶促降解塑料是解决日益严重的塑料堆积问题的一种可持续方法。将酶用作催化剂的主要挑战在于其稳定性和可回收性问题，而其生产成本高昂且结构脆弱，这进一步加剧了这些问题。在此，我们展示了一种利用工程改造的孢子的方法，这些孢子在其表面高密度展示目标酶，以催化脂肪族聚酯降解并制造可自我降解的材料。工程改造的孢子在其表面展示重组酶，无需进行昂贵的纯化过程。孢子固有的物理和生物学特性使其易于从反应混合物中分离、重复使用和更新。展示脂肪酶的工程改造孢子能完全降解脂肪族聚酯，并在四个循环中保持活性，通过萌发和孢子形成可完全恢复活性。将孢子直接掺入聚酯中可得到完全可降解的坚固材料。我们的研究为塑料降解提供了一种直接且可持续的生物催化方法。
