YouTube video by Jami JoAnne Russell

A newly identified bacterial enzyme can break down certain polyesters and penicillin, suggesting a possible link between plastic digestion and antibiotic resistance. For decades, synthetic plastic waste has been collecting in vast oceanic garbage patches and fragmenting into hazardous microplastics and nanoplastics simply because the biological world cannot rapidly digest it. Microorganisms do colonize these synthetic materials in the environment to form biofilms, creating a unique microbial habitat that researchers call the “plastisphere.” The problem is not a lack of microbial appetite, but rather a profound chemical mismatch between modern synthetic polymers and the enzymes bacteria naturally possess. Researchers at the University of Konstanz have now identified an enzyme that attacks certain polyesters and bioplastics. Its wide-open active site inspired the team to call it the “Pac-Man enzyme.” Laboratory tests also showed that the same enzyme can cleave penicillin, raising the possibility that it could help bacteria resist some antibiotics. Bioplastics break down, but conventional plastic persists Biologists Harry Lerner and David Schleheck uncovered the enzyme while investigating whether microbial communities could completely degrade long-chain aliphatic polyesters, or LCAPs. The materials were developed by chemist Stefan Mecking’s team, which collaborated on the study published in The ISME Journal. “We buried...

A newly identified bacterial enzyme can break down certain polyesters and penicillin, suggesting a possible link between plastic digestion and antibiotic resistance. For decades, synthetic plastic waste has been collecting in vast oceanic garbage patches and fragmenting into hazardous microplastics and nanoplastics simply because the biological world cannot rapidly digest it. Microorganisms do colonize these [...]

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