BIOSCIENCE FOR RENEWABLE RESOURCES AND CLEAN GROWTH - Bioengineering novel platforms for one-pot plastic upcycling

背景：塑料污染是一个主要的环境威胁，并隔离了来自有限石油化工资源的富碳物质。环境、可持续性和经济驱动力要求我们开发新颖而强大的技术来解决塑料废物危机，并通过消费后材料的增值向循环经济迈进。塑料降解和塑料升级回收这一新兴领域正在迅速发展，以应对这一挑战。值得注意的是，已经报道了许多酶在温和的反应条件下降解聚酯底物，包括工程变体的PETase （Ideonella sakaiensis）和叶枝堆肥表皮化酶。此外，我们和其他人已经证明了生物基塑料升级回收途径的潜力，可以将低价值的消费后塑料转化为高价值的小分子，如风味分子香兰素（绿色化学）。农业科学学报，2021,23,4665-4672)。重要的是，这些目标分子目前主要是由有限的石化资源直接合成的。然而，塑料降解效率仍然是一个主要的瓶颈，并且缺乏将塑料降解与升级回收途径相结合的可靠技术。项目：这个高度跨学科的项目将利用塑料降解、合成生物学和生物相容性化学方面的最新发展，开发新的生物技术，将聚酯降解与生物基升级回收途径直接结合起来。我们最初将把注意力集中在微生物生物膜的优化上，用于塑料表面的粘附和解聚。然后，我们将探索微生物共培养方法，以我们现有的香兰素途径作为模型系统，实现一锅聚酯降解和升级回收。这将包括探索结合非酶催化、生物相容性化学方法的机会（RSC Chem）。医学杂志。塑料学报，2021,2,1073-1083)提高塑料降解效率。虽然最初的研究将集中在PET的降解和升级回收上，但其他聚酯材料（如PLA和PEF）的降解和升级回收也将在项目的后期阶段进行探索。该项目将适合具有生物催化、合成生物学、生物相容性或生物有机化学经验的生物学或生物有机化学背景的学生。培训环境：本项目将由爱丁堡大学定量生物学、生物化学和生物技术研究所（IQB3）的Joanna Sadler博士和Stephen Wallace博士指导。该研究将提供跨合成生物学、生物相容性化学、塑料降解和生物催化的多学科培训。成功的候选人还将受益于与SynthSys中心、爱丁堡基因组铸造厂、化学学院和各种工业合作伙伴的紧密联系。

Background:Plastic pollution is a major environmental threat and sequesters carbon-rich materials derived from finite, petrochemical resources. Environmental, sustainability and economic drivers demand that we develop novel and robust technologies to tackle the plastic waste crisis and move towards a circular economy through valorisation of post-consumer materials. The young fields of plastic degradation and plastic upcycling are advancing rapidly to address this challenge. Notably, numerous enzymes have been reported to degrade polyester substrates under mild reaction conditions, including engineered variants of PETase (Ideonella sakaiensis) and leaf branch compost cutinase. Furthermore, we and others have demonstrated the potential of bio-based plastic upcycling pathways to convert low-value, post-consumer plastics into high-value small molecules such as the flavour molecule vanillin (Green Chem., 2021, 23, 4665-4672). Importantly, these target molecules are predominantly currently synthesised directly from finite petrochemical resources. However, plastic degradation efficiencies remain a major bottleneck and robust technologies to interface plastic degradation with upcycling pathways are lacking. The project:This highly interdisciplinary project will harness the latest developments in plastic degradation, synthetic biology and biocompatible chemistry to develop novel enabling biotechnologies to directly interface polyester degradation with bio-based upcycling pathways. We will initially focus our attention on optimisation of microbial biofilms for adhesion to and depolymerisation of plastic surfaces. We will then explore microbial co-culturing approaches to enable one-pot polyester degradation and upcycling, using our existing vanillin pathway as a model system. This will include exploring opportunities for incorporating non-enzyme catalysed, biocompatible chemistry approaches (RSC Chem. Biol., 2021, 2, 1073-1083) to improve the efficiency of plastic degradation. Whilst initial studies will focus on PET degradation and upcycling, the degradation and upcycling of other polyester materials such as PLA and PEF will also be explored in the later stages of the project. The project will be suited to students from biology or bioorganic chemistry backgrounds with previous experience in biocatalysis, synthetic biology, biocompatible or bioorganic chemistry.Training environment:This project will be supervised by Dr Joanna Sadler and Dr Stephen Wallace at the Institute of Quantitative Biology, Biochemistry and Biotechnology (IQB3) at the University of Edinburgh. The research will provide multi-disciplinary training spanning synthetic biology, biocompatible chemistry, plastic degradation and biocatalysis. The successful candidate will also benefit from strong links with the SynthSys centre, the Edinburgh Genome Foundry, the School of Chemistry and various industrial partners.