Discovery of New microbial consortia for the degradation and biovalorisation of Polypropylene

Background: Plastic waste is a huge problem facing society with around 361 million tonnes of
plastic produced per year globally. Much of this plastic is single use and not recycled and as such
ends up contaminating the environment. Additionally, the production of plastics from fossil fuels
has an associated CO2 cost that fuels climate change. In recent years advances have been made
utilising microbial consortia or enzymatic methods to break down polymers, e.g. the discovery and
engineering of PETases. However, many polymers such as polypropylene (PP) remain recalcitrant
to a biologically based mechanism of breakdown. This is a key challenge, as PP accounts for 16% of
polymer production annually. As well as being able to degrade plastics a range of microorganisms
can act as a platform for the renewable, sustainable production of polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA),
that are used in biodegradable plastic production.

The aim of the project is to discover and engineer biological systems to facilitate the breakdown
of PP, with the potential to biovalorise it into PHAs. In this way PP could be converted to a feedstock for the microbial production of small molecule inputs for the sustainable, biodesigned
production of biodegradable plastics.