One-step process makes bioengineered PLA plastic ‘viable’One-step process makes bioengineered PLA plastic ‘viable’
30 November 2009
South Korean scientists have found a way to bioengineer polymers used for everyday plastics and make environmentally conscious plastics more commercially viable, claim the developers.
The team from KAIST University and Korean chemical company LG Chem, led by Professor Sang Yup Lee, focused on polylactic acid (PLA), a bio-based polymer made from renewable resources.
By using a metabolically engineered strain of E.coli, the one-stage process made it possible to produce polylactic acid and its copolymers through direct fermentation. This will make the renewable production of PLA and lactate-containing copolymers cheaper and more commercially viable, it is claimed. Until now, PLA has been produced in a ‘complex and expensive’ two-step fermentation and chemical process of polymerisation.
“This new strategy should be generally useful for developing other engineered organisms capable of producing various unnatural polymers by direct fermentation from renewable resources,” said Prof. Lee.
The research has been published in the journal Biotechnology and Bioengineering.
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