Eco-friendly plastic

 

A team of bioengineers from South Korea claim to have produced the polymers used in everyday plastics without using the fossil fuel-based chemicals conventionally needed to make them. The engineers hope that their work will pave the way for environmentally friendly plastics.

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The team have, working from KAIST University and the LG Chem company, have investigated using Polylactic Acid (PLA), a bio-based polymer.

Commenting on the initiative, team leader Professor Sang Yup Lee said: “The polyesters and other polymers we use everyday are mostly derived from fossil oils made through the refinery or chemical process. The idea of producing polymers from renewable biomass has attracted much attention due to the increasing concerns of environmental problems and the limited nature of fossil resources. PLA is considered a good alternative to petroleum based plastics as it is both biodegradable and has a low toxicity to humans.”

Previously, the processing of PLA was a time-consuming and expensive process, but the team has managed to simplify the process by using an engineered strain of E.coli.

“By developing a strategy which combines metabolic engineering and enzyme engineering, we’ve developed an efficient bio-based one-step production process for PLA and its copolymers. This means that a developed E. coli strain is now capable of efficiently producing unnatural polymers, through a one-step fermentation process,” commented Lee.

The full report is published in the journal Biotechnology and Bioengineering.

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