Development of Bacterial platform for Bioplastics Management.

MIELE, S. ; ROJAS, N.L. ; GHIRINGHELLI, P. D

Mar del Plata

Encuentro; 51 Annual Meeting Argentine Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. LI Reunión Anual Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Bioquímica y Biología Molecular.; 2015

SAIB

The development ofenvironmentally friendly alternatives to conventional petroleum derivedplastics, such as   bioplastics, isurgently desired due to depletion of petroleum resources, global warming, andenvironmental damage.  Among bioplastics,PHAs represent a good alternative since they are produced  biologically directly from renewable  resources. More than 150 differ ent monomerscan be combined within PHA family to give materials with extremely  different properties. However, the use of PHAin a wild range of applications has been hampered mainly by their high  production cost. Furthermore, the difficultyin controlling their biodegradability and their efficient recycling has  become increasingly important. Until now,recycling has been carried out by chemical degradation. A biodegradation  system needs a high variety of specificdegrading enzymes sufficiently active and stable in different reaction  conditions, which has been poorly reported. Weperformeda data mining analysislooking for high temperatures  stabledepolymerases. We selected enzymes able to degrade different types of plasticsincluding copolymers. An  E.  coli recombinant clone, carrying andsimultaneously expressing three depolymerases  would derive in a best  managemet of discarded bioplastics. This is afirst step towards a total recycle system of bioplastics.