<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: Times;">Digestion of PET Plastic by Genetically Modified E. Coli in Simple Batch Style Bioreactors

In light of the discovery of the bacteria Ideonella Sakaiensis in 2016 , enzyme based recycling has become a very promising field of study. The bacteria was found in the sludge of a Japanese recycling plant and produced the enzyme PET hydrolase. This was one of the first enzymes discovered capable of breaking down type 1 plastic. As time went on, researchers began developing more efficient versions of PET hydrolase. Though it has amazing potential, its ability in a low fidelity setting is still unknown. In our study, we produced a series of low fidelity bioreactors to test the enzyme&rsquo;s capabilities under stress. For our procedures, we used E. Coli modified with the pET21b(+)-Is-PETase plasmid to produce the enzyme for our study. We conducted our experiment over the course of 4 weeks with 5 unique batch style bioreactors. In our research we were able to determine that E.Coli was able to decrease the weight of 0.6 grams (&plusmn; 200 milligrams) PET plastic strips by 0.2 milligrams (&plusmn; 0.1 milligram).