Oops! "Unintentionally Engineered"

Prof John McGeehan (CREDIT Stefan Venter, UPIX Photography)

This from the Good Oops! or "Unintentionally Engineered" Department...

International team engineers plastic digesting enzyme, theengineer.co.uk, 17 Apr 2018.

"Scientists from Portsmouth University and the Diamond Light Source are part of an international team that has engineered an enzyme with the potential to digest certain plastics.

"The discovery could lead to a recycling solution for the millions of tonnes of plastic bottles made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which will persist for hundreds of years in the environment."

"The research was led by teams at the Portsmouth University and the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)."

"Portsmouth University’s Prof John McGeehan and Dr Gregg Beckham at NREL solved the crystal structure of PETase – an enzyme that digests PET- and used this 3D information to understand how it works. During this study, they unintentionally engineered an enzyme that is even better at degrading the plastic than the one that has already evolved."

Go here for the whole story...

Uh Oh, Accident, Tom Chapin - 2010