Mutant enzyme munches plastic

An international team of scientists has accidentally stumbled upon a faster way to recycle used plastic bottles, by improving a naturally occurring enzyme that digests plastic more quickly. An enzyme is a substance produced by a living thing that speeds up chemical reactions within that living thing. Plastic is cheap to produce but slow to decompose, or decay, which can cause environmental damage. In 2016, Japanese researchers found a strain of bacteria at a recycling centre that releases an enzyme that gobbles up polyethylene terephthalate (PET), the hard plastic used in bottles. Last week, a team from the University of Portsmouth announced that they had unintentionally made the enzyme 20% better at breaking down PET. It can start breaking down plastic in just a few days, a breakthrough that means…

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The Week Junior (Digital) - 1 Issue, No. 125

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