A step toward biodegradable plastics
MIT chemists have determined the structure of a bacterial enzyme that can produce biodegradable plastics, an advance that could help chemical engineers tweak the enzyme to make it even more industrially useful. The enzyme generates long polymer chains that can form either hard or soft plastics, depending on the starting materials that go into them. Learning more about the enzyme’s structure could help engineers control the polymers’ composition and size, a possible step toward commercial production of these plastics, which, unlike conventional plastic formed from petroleum products, should be biodegradable. “I’m hoping that this structure will help people in thinking about a way that we can use this knowledge from nature to do something better for our planet,” says Catherine Drennan, an MIT professor of chemistry and biology and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. “I believe you want to have a good fundamental understanding of enzymes like this before you start engineering...