Programming aliphatic polyester degradation by engineered bacterial spores
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Abstract
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.
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Immersing these materials in an LB medium also resulted in complete degradation
Does this suggest that immersion in any liquid would induce degradation? I would like to understand if the biocomposites start to degrade in water, or even in high-humidity environments without suspension in liquids. I might be missing something about what these lipases need for activity, though.
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whereas the materials’ ability to elongate (Figure 6h) was slightly reduced upon addition of spores.
I'm curious about applications and materials where this would matter. Are there plastics that don't need as much elongation?
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This result shows that while the recycled spores retain catalytic activities, they tend to be slower than the pristine ones.
What could be contributing to reduced catalytic activity? It's interesting that activity is renewed after a vegetative cycle - do displayed lipases degrade over cycles?
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GPC trace of all PCL fragments before and after incubation with (b) TIED-LipA and (c) TIED-LipB.
I'm not very familiar with analyzing GPC traces. There are red and blue boxes highlighting peaks in the data around elutions times of 3.5-4min, but I don't see descriptions of those highlight boxes anywhere. Are these peaks important? I assume they are because they decrease over incubation time.
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These TIED spores displaying recombinant enzymes exhibited robust catalytic activities, resilient in harsh conditions, and enabled recycling and complete renewal of catalytic activities through the cycle of germination and sporulation.
This is a fascinating preprint, thank you! Creating a more resilient way to break down plastics--especially by creating biocomposite materials--seems like a broadly useful breakthrough.
I'm curious about real-world application of this technology. Do you see either of the two processes described being more useful for manufacturers/processing facilities? Will it be easier to incorporate a spore suspension step, or is starting from a biocomposite material simpler?
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