Identifying enzymes for robust biodegradable plastics production through high-throughput functional screening

Plastic production is a nearly $1 trillion global industry, producing 400 million metric tons in 2022. Yet, only about 10% of plastics are recycled. Compostable plastics could help address current recycling challenges for commonly used plastic polymers, as well as the health risks that these plastics pose when they accumulate in the environment. However, existing compostable plastics lack many of the desirable properties of commodity plastics, such as high toughness, solvent resistance, thermal stability, and processability, and are not infinitely recyclable. This project aims to develop enzymes to produce monomers used in compostable plastics, addressing this critical gap. To accomplish this, we are combining technologies from the Fordyce and Jewett labs that uniquely enable high-throughput production, purification, and characterization of many enzyme variants in parallel. By combining high-throughput characterization with AI-based protein function prediction methods, we will accelerate development of pipelines for producing easily recyclable plastics.