Discovery of New microbial consortia for the degradation and biovalorisation of Polypropylene

塑料垃圾是社会面临的一个巨大问题，全球每年产生约3.61亿吨塑料。大部分塑料是一次性使用的，没有回收，因此最终污染了环境。此外，从化石燃料中生产塑料是一种相关的二氧化碳成本，加剧了气候变化。近年来，利用微生物聚生体或酶法来分解聚合物取得了进展，例如发现和工程改造了PET酶。然而，许多聚合物，如聚丙烯（PP），仍然是基于生物学的分解机制。这是一个关键的挑战，因为PP占每年聚合物产量的16%。除了能够降解塑料外，一系列微生物还可以作为可再生、可持续生产聚羟基烷酸酯（PHA）的平台，用于生物降解塑料的生产。该项目的目的是发现和设计生物系统，以促进PP的分解，并有可能将其生物转化为PHA。通过这种方式，PP可以转化为微生物生产小分子投入物的原料，用于可持续的生物设计生产生物降解塑料。

Background: Plastic waste is a huge problem facing society with around 361 million tonnes ofplastic produced per year globally. Much of this plastic is single use and not recycled and as suchends up contaminating the environment. Additionally, the production of plastics from fossil fuelshas an associated CO2 cost that fuels climate change. In recent years advances have been madeutilising microbial consortia or enzymatic methods to break down polymers, e.g. the discovery andengineering of PETases. However, many polymers such as polypropylene (PP) remain recalcitrantto a biologically based mechanism of breakdown. This is a key challenge, as PP accounts for 16% ofpolymer production annually. As well as being able to degrade plastics a range of microorganismscan act as a platform for the renewable, sustainable production of polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA),that are used in biodegradable plastic production.The aim of the project is to discover and engineer biological systems to facilitate the breakdownof PP, with the potential to biovalorise it into PHAs. In this way PP could be converted to a feedstock for the microbial production of small molecule inputs for the sustainable, biodesignedproduction of biodegradable plastics.