Computational identification of plastic-degrading enzymes in ocean microbiomes.

ABSTRACT: With about 7 billion metric tons of plastic waste already in our environment and over 20 million metric tons of plastic produced annually, plastic waste has become a major global problem. Current methods to address this problem, such as incineration and landfills, are unsustainable and environmentally harmful. More trending approaches, such as plastic degradation using microbial enzymes, are rarely efficient enough to be applied industrially. To fill this gap in our knowledge, we developed a computational method called IPDE (Identification of Plastic Degrading Enzymes) to systematically identify promising enzymes, enzyme combinations, and microbial species for effective plastic waste degradation. Using IPDE, we discovered 50 and 86 enzymes in ocean and topsoil microbiomes, respectively, wi

SUBMITTER: Li S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12048482 | biostudies-literature | 2025 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature