Abstract

Petroleum-based plastics are durable and accumulate in all ecological niches. Knowledge on enzymatic degradation is still very limited. Today, less than 200 verified plastics-active enzymes are known. During my presentation I will give an overview on the current status and potential of plastic active enzymes for plastic recycling and remediation.

The best studied enzymes are those acting on the polymers polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polyurethane (PUR, ester-based). Furthermore, very few polyamide (PA) oligomer active enzymes are known. To advance this field we have developed and applied a highly efficient Hidden-Markov-Model based search pipeline for the identification of novel hydrolases acting on ester-based polymers. Using this pipeline in combination with in vitro transcription and translation approaches, we were able to enrich the known biodiversity of PETases and PURases significantly and by mining in global and local metagenomes. Within my presentation I will highlight advances in metagenome screening technologies for plastic-active enzymes using fluorescent and non-fluorescent reporter systems. 

Furthermore, I will report on our efforts to obtain polyamidases using smart enrichment and cultivation approaches.

About the speaker: 

Wolfgang Streit received his PhD in Biology in 1994 from the University of Marburg, Germany. From 1996-1997 he was a postdoc at UC Davis, CA. After a short stay at the University of Bielefeld he moved to the University of Göttingen, Germany where he received his habilitation in 2002. He was associate professor for enzyme biotechnology at the University of Duisburg-Essen from 2004-2006. In 2006 he was appointed as chair of the department of Microbiology and Biotechnology at the University of Hamburg. Research in the lab focuses on functional metagenomics, biotechnology, bacterial genetics, biofilm research and cell-cell communication.

FHNW (campus Muttenz, Hofackerstrasse 30, 4132 Muttenz, Switzerland)

Room 02-O-03