Nature-Inspired Circular-Economy Recycling for Proteins: Proof of Concept.

ABSTRACT: The billion tons of synthetic-polymer-based materials (i.e. plastics) produced yearly are a great challenge for humanity. Nature produces even more natural polymers, yet they are sustainable. Proteins are sequence-defined natural polymers that are constantly recycled when living systems feed. Digestion is the protein depolymerization into amino acids (the monomers) followed by their re-assembly into new proteins of arbitrarily different sequence and function. This breaks a common recycling paradigm where a material is recycled into itself. Organisms feed off of random protein mixtures that are "recycled" into new proteins whose identity depends on the cell's specific needs. In this study, mixtures of several peptides and/or proteins are depolymerized into their amino acid constituents, and

SUBMITTER: Giaveri S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11469202 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature