New Insights into the Function and Global Distribution of Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET)-Degrading Bacteria and Enzymes in Marine and Terrestrial Metagenomes.

ABSTRACT: Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is one of the most important synthetic polymers used today. Unfortunately, the polymers accumulate in nature and to date no highly active enzymes are known that can degrade it at high velocity. Enzymes involved in PET degradation are mainly α- and β-hydrolases, like cutinases and related enzymes (EC 3.1.1). Currently, only a small number of such enzymes are well characterized. In this work, a search algorithm was developed that identified 504 possible PET hydrolase candidate genes from various databases. A further global search that comprised more than 16 Gb of sequence information within 108 marine and 25 terrestrial metagenomes obtained from the Integrated Microbial Genome (IMG) database detected 349 putative PET hydrolases. Heterologous expression of fou

SUBMITTER: Danso D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5881046 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature