A microbial Plastic Factory for High-quality Green Plastic
Published:18 Jun.2024 Source:Kobe University
Engineered bacteria can produce a plastic modifier that makes renewably sourced plastic more processable, more fracture resistant and highly biodegradable even in sea water. The Kobe University development provides a platform for the industrial-scale, tunable production of a material that holds great potential for turning the plastic industry green.
Kobe University bioengineers around TAGUCHI Seiichi together with the biodegradable polymer manufacturing company Kaneka Corporation decided to mix polylactic acid with another bioplastic, called LAHB, which has a range of desirable properties, but most of all it is biodegradable and mixes well with polylactic acid. In order to produce LAHB, they needed to engineer a strain of bacteria that naturally produces a precursor, by systematically manipulating the organism's genome through the addition of new genes and the deletion of interfering ones.
by modifying the genome, they could control the length of the LAHB chain and thus the properties of the resulting plastic. Most importantly, by adding LAHB of this unprecedented length to polylactic acid, they could create a material that exhibits all the properties the researchers had aimed for. The resulting highly transparent plastic is much better moldable and more shock resistant than pure polylactic acid, and also biodegrades in seawater within a week.