[Commentary: polymer binding modules accelerate enzymatic degradation of poly(ethylene terephthalate)].

Abstract

The large scale production and indiscriminate use of plastics led to serious environmental pollution. To reduce the negative effects of plastics waste on the environment, an approach of enzymatic degradation was put forward to catalyze plastics degradation. Protein engineering strategies have been applied to improve the plastics degrading enzyme properties such as activity and thermal stability. In addition, polymer binding modules were found to accelerate the enzymatic degradation of plastics. In this article, we introduced a recent work published in Chem Catalysis, which studied the role of binding modules in enzymatic hydrolysis of poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) at high-solids loadings. Graham et al. found that binding modules accelerated PET enzymatic degradation at low PET loading (< 10 wt%) and the enhanced degradation cannot be observed at high PET loading (10 wt%-20 wt%). This work is beneficial for the industrial application of polymer binding modules in plastics degradation.