[HN Gopher] Scientists create artificial protein that can degrad...
___________________________________________________________________
Scientists create artificial protein that can degrade PET plastics
in bottles
Author : rose_ann_
Score : 126 points
Date : 2023-11-05 15:11 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (phys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
| gilleain wrote:
| Nice. A few points:
|
| * This protein acts as a PETase - see also
| <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37659327> - but may work at
| room temperature, and more efficiently
|
| * The term 'artificial protein' is a bit awkward - it's a
| modified version of an existing protein from an anemone (see :
| <https://www.rcsb.org/structure/4tsy>)
|
| * The scaffold protein is a pore-forming structure - where
| multiple trans-membrane helices come together, like melittin in
| bee venom - so they claim it could work as part of a membrane-
| bound complex
| flobosg wrote:
| > The term 'artificial protein' is a bit awkward
|
| I agree. The proper term would be _engineered protein_ , since
| it is a fusion of two existing protein domains: an already
| engineered cutinase (a PETase ancestor) with a pore-forming
| protein (FraC).
| haolez wrote:
| What happens if eventually we find this protein in the wild?
| :)
| sandworm101 wrote:
| The entire plastics industry is screwed.
|
| It is only a matter of time before bacteria evolve some way
| of getting at the energy stored in plastics. Once that
| happens, once plastics start to "rot" as they are eaten by
| bacteria, the impacts on our technology could be
| catastrophic. The world might looks very steampunk as metal
| and ceramics replace plastics.
| Leonelf wrote:
| Wood-eating bacteria already exist and we use wood as a
| material for many things. It's not like such bacteria
| just spread from breath, like covid-viruses...
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Look up shipworm, which historically took out many ships.
| Plenty of stuff eats wood quickly enough to cause issues.
| We have just evolved countermeasures. And trees are the
| product of a billion years of anti-predator evolution.
| Plastic is different than wood. It is homogenous and
| dead. Something like a plastic-eating bacteria might move
| through it exponentially.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| There are plenty of old wooden houses still standing
| (even ones which predate modern plastic based paints),
| people still make boats out of wood too. I suspect
| similar things will happen with plastic, we'll learn to
| build and protect plastic in the way that we used to do
| with wood, and probably more stuff will be built out of
| stone.
| flobosg wrote:
| That variant would be a natural/wild-type one.
| mrob wrote:
| We already make many things from materials that can be
| degraded by microbes (wood, cotton, leather, etc.). They
| can be preserved by keeping them dry, or with paint or
| other surface treatments. For the rare circumstances where
| this is impossible (e.g. medical devices) we have
| fluoropolymers, which I'm confident aren't going to get
| degraded by microbes any time soon.
| dejj wrote:
| A long time ago, wood (Lignin) wasn't biodegradable.
| Trees just piled up instead of rotting. That resulted in
| oil deposits. These we turn into plastics.
|
| Bacteria acquiring genes to feed on plastics would lead
| to closing the circle again. Although supply will be cut
| short when humanity gives up producing plastics.
| rob74 wrote:
| "microplastics in bottles" is even more awkward - I mean, as
| long as they're part of a bottle, they're by definition not
| microplastics?
| pfdietz wrote:
| Maybe they're very very small bottles.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Major omitted-from-headline limitation: It only works on PET
| plastic. (AKA "PETE", or
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyethylene_terephthalate -
| recycling number "1" or "01")
|
| Quibble: "microplastics in bottles" looks far more like keyword
| stuffing then a sensible description.
| lucb1e wrote:
| I find the current title much more clear than requiring that
| people know what PET is.
|
| And if you're familiar enough to know what plastic types exist,
| you probably also realize that this won't be a miracle protein
| that can tackle a ton of different chemicals with this one
| innovation/advancement.
|
| Unless you're a chemical engineer, I can't think of a place
| where anyone would need to know what PET is. Bottle returns
| don't have different holes based on the recycling type, I can
| even throw glass and cans in with plastic bottles and it'll
| scan the label and sort it out. For me, I might have made a
| tentative guess that PET is used in bottles, and my dad
| inspects factories that produce that stuff and so it's not like
| I had no exposure to it (just no interest in the myriad of
| plastics we're trying to avoid)
| Filligree wrote:
| Anyone who uses 3D printers would need to know what PET is,
| not to mention half a dozen other plastics. ;-)
|
| PLA is usually the go-to; it's ideal in nearly every respect
| except cost, especially its modern formulations. But PETG is
| still often used for its heat resistance, Polycarbonate is
| great for physical strength, ASA is lovely for outdoors work,
| ABS is still the cheapest option... and some people are crazy
| enough to print Nylon.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Okay - "Scientists create artificial protein that can degrade
| a very common type of plastic".
| dang wrote:
| I tried "Scientists create protein that can degrade a common
| plastic in bottles" as well but I think it's ok to say "PET"
| even if few people know what it is. It's implicit that it's
| (a) not all plastics and (b) the article will say what it is.
| dang wrote:
| Ok, we've s/micro/PET /'d the title above. Thanks!
| peakskill wrote:
| How about microplastics in the body? :^]
| bcardarella wrote:
| I see similar articles or research like twice a year. And nothing
| ever comes of it.
| permo-w wrote:
| seriously. I'd say more often than that even. is it that they
| are being used and we're just not hearing it, or is there
| something holding them back?
| Erratic6576 wrote:
| A very important sentiment comes of it: don't worry,
| politicians, The solution to this polluting agent is near. The
| more plastic we generate today, the sooner we are to finding a
| final solution which does not involve damaging our sacred
| revenue rate.
|
| There's no need to destroy our perfect status quo
| asow92 wrote:
| Microplastics are the "lead/asbestos poisoning" of our
| generation, and the problem is actually far more dire than either
| of the former. Someday, we will look back on how we could have
| ever allowed microplastics into our lives with shock and awe.
| unglaublich wrote:
| Why do we allow burning gigantic storages of carbohydrate fuels
| while we know full well that the planet's livability suffers
| from climate change?
|
| Why do we allow fueling our energy plants and automobiles with
| fossil fuels that causes air pollution responsible for 1/5
| deaths world wide? [0]
|
| Why do we allow one-time use plastics and synthetic tire
| rubbers while knowing it causes irreversible microplastics
| pollution of land and sea?
|
| ... looking at you, fossil fuel lobbyists.
|
| [0]: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/c-change/news/fossil-fuel-
| air-p...
| testfoobar wrote:
| The underlying cause of climate change, air pollution and
| waterways full of plastic waste is the Tragedy of the
| Commons.
|
| https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/climate-
| ch...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
| unglaublich wrote:
| Yep. We should have forced mining and oil companies to pay
| opportunity costs to our future self whenever they extract
| finite resources from the planet.
| no_moms_no_hugs wrote:
| The challenge is that those costs were not understood
| when these extractive heavy industries were stood up, and
| large parts of our legal and governance systems were set
| up to ensure that those industries could exist,
| presumably to enrich all of us (e.g., the mineral rights
| system). By the time the costs were understood, the
| owners of those industries had accrued enough capital
| from their operation to actively fight off challenges to
| them for decades.
|
| The tragedy is obvious, but I think it's an important
| example as we move forward with other dramatic and
| potentially disastrous technological changes. What
| happens if we discover conclusively in 15 years that
| observing recommendation-algorithm driven social media
| for more than an hour a day causes dementia? Would we
| move quickly to ban it, or would we endure a protracted
| fight with Meta, TikTok et. al. about our "right to
| scroll" while the damages accrue?
| devmor wrote:
| It's kind of interesting how we, as carbon based lifeforms,
| have been spewing carbon products into every part of our
| environment en-mass and they all seem to have negative
| influences on our well being.
| nayuki wrote:
| > burning gigantic storages of carbohydrate fuels
|
| Fossil fuels are hydrocarbons - they're made up of carbon and
| hydrogen (and very little oxygen).
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrocarbon
|
| Carbohydrate is C + H + oxygen, and generally refers to
| biological molecules derived from glucose.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbohydrate
| permo-w wrote:
| it's fascinating to see in real time. you would think it would
| be Semmelweiss-esque - a lone discredited voice - but it's not.
| everyone seems to be fully aware of the problem and its likely
| dangers ... and yet the problem is as bad as ever
| HideousKojima wrote:
| The reason is simple: despite their many problems, plastics
| are a modern day miracle material. The alternatives I see
| proposed may match or beat it on one or two factors, but not
| everything.
|
| A viable general replacement for plastic needs to beat
| plastic on price, weight, durability, sanitation, strength,
| and so much more.
| convolvatron wrote:
| or we could be willing to trade off some of these factors
| in order not to befoul our home
| blooalien wrote:
| ^^^ So very much _this!_ ^^^ It 's a shame I cannot
| upvote this more than once.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It is sort of weird because people around the world are
| staving, while we have tons of food waste in the west. So
| there is in some sense a crisis and plastics are a tool
| that could be used to help solve it.
|
| But we don't, instead we peel oranges and then sell them
| in plastic containers at the grocery store.
|
| If we were talking about making hard trade-offs between
| preservation required to save lives and reducing
| pollution that would be one thing. Instead we use it to
| enable greater waste.
| yakubin wrote:
| _> But we don't, instead we peel oranges and then sell
| them in plastic containers at the grocery store._
|
| Someone is selling peeled oranges? O.o
|
| How long until they sell peeled apples?
| bee_rider wrote:
| Maybe not anymore, but Wholefoods gave it a try, there
| was a bit of mockery. In general I think the idea that
| our food is over-processed and over-packaged is not a new
| complaint, haha.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Ok, you first. And don't be shocked when people
| (especially the lower classes) get upset when your
| efforts to ban plastics lead to meat and produce spoiling
| much faster and/or costing much more, or lead to shipping
| costs on common goods increasing significantly, etc.
| permo-w wrote:
| the issue here isn't the wrapping on vital foods. no one
| is asking for that to be banned. or no one should be
| anyway. the issue is the wrapping on literally everything
| else
| asow92 wrote:
| Have you seen that there is an allowed amount of plastic
| mixed into animal feed? https://www.theguardian.com/envir
| onment/2018/dec/15/legal-pl...
|
| This is about more than sanitary wrapping.
| slt2021 wrote:
| who is going to pay for that?
| shawnz wrote:
| I think this is really underselling the danger of lead and
| asbestos. They were known to be dangerous basically since their
| commercial introduction and there are undeniable large scale
| negative health trends which are clearly attributable to both,
| unlike with microplastics
| asow92 wrote:
| The negative effects of lead and asbestos are known and
| abatement is ongoing. There are grants being administered
| today to aid in their continued abatement.
|
| The negative known effects of microplastics are emerging. The
| public are not as aware of the extent to which they are
| exposed to microplastics daily. We don't actually know the
| full extent of the damage being done yet, but what we do know
| so far is that microplastics affect neurological development,
| fertility, and are known endocrine-disrupters. It will take
| time to see the full effects of microplastics in our
| environment, and it's going to get worse before it gets
| better.
| pcrh wrote:
| I've yet to see any evidence that microplastics are toxic.
| Plastics are generally inert, and by the time they have broken
| down into microscopic pieces, most plasticizers have already
| been leached from the particles.
|
| Microplastics are an ugly witness to pollution, but are likely
| not themselves very harmful.
| Tagbert wrote:
| The base monomers and polymers of PET may not themselves be
| toxic, but there are plasticizer chemicals added to them to
| adjust the characteristics that can have biological impacts.
| Additionally, once the PET starts to break into
| microplastics, it can attract and accumulate other chemicals
| that are actually toxic.
|
| Other plastics can be directly toxic, such as styrenes.
| citrin_ru wrote:
| Is there any benefits to degrading plastic (using proteins or
| bacteria) if BPA/BPS will stay not degraded? From what I recon
| health harm comes not from plastic itself but from additives like
| BPA, BPS e. t. c.
| hx8 wrote:
| Perfect is the enemy of good.
|
| Plastic and Microplastics are an environmental hazard to animal
| life, with a specific threat to aquatic life. The plastic
| itself is a significant physical hazard for the life. The
| attached link has an incredible photo of a the scale of a small
| fish and various microplastics. It's important to note that
| currently there is no cost effective way for water treatment
| plants to filter for these.
|
| https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/microplast...
| DrThunder wrote:
| How do you keep something like this from spreading and
| deteriorating plastics in things you don't want it to?
| tabtab wrote:
| GOP: "Oh shit, Hunter's laptop is now a pile of goo! What are
| we going to rant about all day now?"
| jdawg777 wrote:
| We should stop focusing on recycling plastics and invest in
| garbage incinerators/power plants.
| jdiff wrote:
| More CO2 and a lovely cocktail of toxic gases, this doesn't
| sound like the elegant solution you're phrasing it as.
| bloak wrote:
| A proper incinerator doesn't release toxic gases and
| generates electricity so perhaps fewer fossil fuels can be
| burnt while it's running so it's not quite as bad as how
| you're phrasing it either.
|
| I don't claim to know what's best out of recycle, incinerate,
| landfill and biodegrade. To me none of them seems obviously
| bad. Various calculations would need to be done.
| jdawg777 wrote:
| I just read the wikipedia article:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste-to-energy_plant Some
| interesting points:
|
| "Waste-to-energy plants cause less air pollution than coal
| plants, but more than natural gas plants.[2] At the same
| time, it is carbon-negative: processing waste into fuel
| releases considerably less carbon and methane into the air
| than having waste decay away in landfills or bodies of
| water."
|
| "Burning municipal waste does produce significant amounts
| of dioxin and furan emissions[4] to the atmosphere as
| compared to the smaller amounts produced by burning coal or
| natural gas. Dioxins and furans are considered by many to
| be serious health hazards. However, advances in emission
| control designs and very stringent new governmental
| regulations, as well as public opposition to municipal
| waste incinerators, have caused large reductions in the
| amount of dioxins and furans produced by waste-to-energy
| plants."
| aranchelk wrote:
| Search "waste to energy Sweden". It's not perfect, but they
| have emissions standards and they do filtration.
|
| It's probably significantly better than pretending to recycle
| the stuff and then burning fuel to ship it somewhere else.
| lasermike026 wrote:
| While that nice the goal is to significantly reduce the use of
| plastics and petrochemical in general. What we are talking about
| is a reengining of modern tools and products. These efforts will
| be aggressive.
| lysozyme wrote:
| As cool as this is, the word "microplastics" is a little
| misleading. There are dozens of types of plastic in common use,
| each made from a different monomer with a different chemical
| linkage, of which PET is only one. The engineered protein in TFA
| will only work on PET and we'll need to design new proteins for
| the other types of plastic. (I can help with that.)
|
| The problem with enzymes eating plastic is that enzymes are small
| Pacman-shaped protein blobs that are maybe 10 nanometers in
| diameter, whereas things made of plastic like bottles or even
| microplastics are huge in comparison. How do you get the little
| Pacman jaws around the bottle to start breaking it down?
|
| The research paper [1] describes the authors' effective
| innovation. They make a protein where one end is a pore-forming
| shape, and the other end is a PET cutting (called a PETase in the
| jargon of the field). This way, their protein can access nooks
| and crannies in the macroplastic shapes, allowing tons of copies
| of this small enzyme to fully degrade a bottle.
|
| Without this, a great deal of physical agitation is required to
| break down the plastics into small enough chunks that earlier
| Pacman enzymes could work on, increasing the time and the cost.
|
| I hope we'll see the idea of linking the enzymatic "scissors" to
| a protein pore be used to engineer enzymes to degrade other types
| of plastics in the future, as the general idea of getting the
| catalytic machinery into physical contact with every bit of the
| bottle is broadly applicable to all plastics, not just PET (which
| is great news)
|
| 1. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-scientists-artificial-
| protein-...
| whatshisface wrote:
| I don't really see why there is a problem with degrading whole
| bottles. If you have separated from the waste stream, you can
| incinerate or even landfill them (it's not like you'd be
| wasting any resources). It's the microplastics that form when
| the bottles are dumped into the oceans or waterways and broken
| up by Nature which need a novel solution for removal.
| troupe wrote:
| This announcement sounds like something mentioned in the
| background on TV while the soon to be hero eats breakfast before
| heading to work in an underpaid thankless position. 15 minutes
| later the audience learns that the protein has escaped the lab,
| become sentient, and is assembling plastic into Godzilla.
| lucb1e wrote:
| With these articles I always wonder what they're turned into,
| since headlines and introductory paragraphs always conveniently
| omit that. These seem to be the relevant parts of the article:
|
| > degrading PET [particles] and reducing them to their essential
| components, which would allow them to be broken down or recycled
|
| > "One variant breaks down the PET particles more thoroughly, so
| it could be used for degradation in sewage treatment plants. The
| other gives rise to the initial components needed for recycling.
| In this way we can purify or recycle, depending on the needs,"
| explains Laura Fernandez Lopez
|
| Hmm, so that sounds like it's a step forwards (working the
| problem), but not yet a solution that can recycle PET into
| something anyone can use
|
| Edit: this is why I'm asking...
|
| Article: "... the bacterium Idionella sakaiensis, which is
| capable of degrading this type of plastic and was discovered in
| 2016 in a packaging recycling plant in Japan."
|
| Wikipedia on Ideonella sakaiensis: "[they] mineralize 75% of the
| degraded PET into carbon dioxide" (to be fair, it also produces a
| "MHETase enzyme" which "could also be optimized and used in
| recycling or bioremediation applications")
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideonella_sakaiensis
| jokoon wrote:
| I wish hacker news was only about computing and not fringe
| science news, because unless it's an innovative product and it
| shows it's a breakthrough, it's probably techno-optimism or it's
| click-baity.
|
| This applies for everything about batteries, and environmental
| techs.
|
| The supraconductor crystal news was also quite a revealing event
| of the problem.
| passwordoops wrote:
| Plastic eating enzymes have been a thing since the 90s. There's a
| breathless headline every 3-6 months. None get out of the lab
| just_boost_it wrote:
| It would be an interesting world if all our plastics started to
| rot. Water and sewerage piping is mostly plastic, there's heavy
| uses of plastics in electrical infrastructure, the majority of
| our containers, many car parts, the bulk of the housings of our
| electronics, building weatherproofing, most of our clothing... It
| would be nice to use other materials, but plastics are used
| because they're cheap, easy to work with, and they work well.
|
| Also, how much plastic has been produced over the last 100 years?
| It also would have been nice not to have just thrown it all into
| a landfill, but now that it's there do we really want to release
| all the CO2 that's been safely locked away underground in solid
| plastic?
| no_moms_no_hugs wrote:
| Plastics are largely cheap because they're bi-products of
| natural gas, gasoline and diesel fuel manufacturing. As demand
| for those fuels declines, plastics will necessarily become more
| expensive.
|
| They certainly have a lot of inherent utility, but given the
| emerging risks to the planet's ecology and our own health, I
| think it's hard to see a future where we extensively use
| plastics to the same extent we do now.
| sholladay wrote:
| I'd love to get a sense of how much less plastic will be made
| - or how much more it will cost - as renewable energy and
| electric vehicles replace fossil fuels. Has someone modeled
| this?
| zackmorris wrote:
| I'd like to know who originally put incompatible types of plastic
| under the same number, which contaminates recycling runs. Like
| PET/PETE under "1" and injection-molded/blow-molded HDPE under
| "2":
|
| https://www.warwickri.gov/sanitation-recycling/faq/why-cant-...
|
| Many cities have banned recycling the most commonly used
| plastics, like plastic water bottles made of 1 (PET). Where I
| live, 1 and 2 get recycled, 3 (PVC) gets thrown in a landfill and
| 4-7 get sent to a separate refinery which converts them to diesel
| fuel.
|
| Not to mention that there seems to be no standard on the
| legibility of the number.
|
| How many people reading this have thought about automating
| recycling by having machine learning sort the types? Yet I've
| never seen "recycling engineer" as a job title. Nor have I seen
| any grants for improving recycling. Nor any
| corporations/billionaires making recycling a priority. There have
| even been TV shows by prominent celebrities pushing propaganda
| against recycling, like the Penn & Teller: Bullsh*t! episode from
| the post Dot Bomb luddite era of 2004:
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0771119/
|
| We're willing to drink a protein that can degrade plastic before
| we're willing to hold industry accountable for the waste it
| produces?
| kragen wrote:
| pete isn't a different kind of plastic from pet, it's just a
| usa-only abbreviation to avoid the non-plastic-related pet
| trademark the pet company uses on their disposable drinking
| vessels made from whatever material
|
| the broader point is valid that recycling even hdpe is
| difficult because of the diversity of fillers and other
| additives, not to mention variation in molecular weight even
| before scission by ultraviolet, hydrolysis, or the heat of the
| molding process
|
| there are in fact people who make a living by recycling. until
| recently around here they even bought pet, offering lower
| prices for the colored pet (because with pet you really can
| economically separate out the fillers and additives and
| repolymerize it to a known molecular weight)
|
| mostly they recycle paper (mostly cardboard), copper, bronze,
| brass, lead, and aluminum. glass, steel, concrete, and plastics
| can be recycled but it's hard to make it profitable
|
| if you hold industry liable for damage done by people
| improperly discarding its products, soon you will have no
| industry
| CptFribble wrote:
| Another story about waste "solutions," another opportunity to
| remind the gentle readers about plasma gasification. A re-post of
| an earlier comment of mine on the topic follows:
|
| ---
|
| Why are we still not talking about plasma gasification?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification
|
| As far as I can tell, the only real "disadvantages" if you can
| call them that, are:
|
| 1. more expensive than throwing the garbage in a big pile
| somewhere
|
| 2. need to clean it from time to time
|
| 3. not necessarily a profitable business
|
| Other than that, it can handle just about anything that's not
| radioactive, can be designed to produce 0 toxic byproducts, and
| can run at or at least only slightly below energy neutral. Plasma
| gasifiers can also consume a huge amount of garbage for their
| size, so much so that the US Navy is starting to put them on the
| latest generation of aircraft carriers.
|
| Not building out more gasifiers seems to me a failure of the free
| market. Because it's hard to make it profitable, no one is doing
| it - when really we should just be building one or two near every
| major city and funneling all our garbage there.
|
| In theory, we could build out enough to start working through all
| the landfills too.
| 01100011 wrote:
| Does plasma gasification result in plastic monomers that can be
| used as building blocks for new polymers? If not, it seems like
| it is addressing a different need.
| kragen wrote:
| this novel process seems to produce carbon dioxide and water,
| not terephthalic acid
| Roritharr wrote:
| I'm thinking in the same way, just would love a slimmed down
| domestic version. The inefficiency of garbage trucks hauling
| waste around should easily cover the cost of energy for both
| gasification and the reduction of pollution to acceptable
| levels.
|
| This would also bring you the added benefit of _actually
| knowing_ that your waste does not contribute to introducing
| harmful toxins to groundwater supply or even the sea.
| kragen wrote:
| probably because landfills work fine if you aren't on an
| aircraft carrier. and they're cheaper. they're also rich veins
| of valuable minerals for the future, but that unfortunately
| doesn't figure into their present profitability
| bobthepanda wrote:
| It's also mentioned that it's more expensive than normal
| incineration, and waste-to-energy gets you most of the way
| towards eliminating the worst parts of plastic waste if done
| right. It's very widespread in Japan and parts of Europe
| already.
|
| Usually the issue with waste-to-energy is locating a
| facility, and I would imagine plasma gasification would run
| into similar NIMBY issues just because people don't like the
| idea of being next to a large intake facility of garbage,
| regardless of how bad it is in practice.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| I was always thinking, could we combine incineration + plasma
| gasification? What if we burn the garbage, which results in a
| lot of heat + clean + noxious gases, and then we just pass the
| gases through plasma? That should take care of anything that is
| dangerous in the emissions, but also make it more efficient,
| because a lot of the mass has already burned, plasma doesn't
| have to go through that much material anymore
| larodi wrote:
| Nature created mycelium which eats microplastics (and all kinds
| of carbohydrates) for lunch and grows shrooms on top of it. Not
| sure why we need artificial proteins for that.
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