In 2016, the key to naturally deconstructing plastic seemed to have been found. News had broken about plastic-eating bacteria discovered in Japan. The bacterium contains a protein that can break down plastic, a pollutant that is linked to health issues including cancer.
Since then, protein engineers have been trying to give that protein superpowers not needed in nature, but essential for industrial recycling. That effort has been slow, but a new tool from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute lab of Nicholas Gauthier, PhD, could help pick up the pace.
Gauthier and Benjamin Fram, PhD, have created a new method that can take an existing protein, along with its evolutionary history, and propose a range of very different new designs that not only maintain the form and function of the original but also build on it with new features that would be unlikely in nature, such as the ability to tolerate high temperatures or interact with new molecules.
