Currently, PET plastic is used extremely widely worldwide and breaks down into microplastics under physicochemical factors. Due to their small particulate form and widespread distribution, microplastics pose significant hazards to ecosystems and human health.
To address the problem of PET plastic pollution, our team is developing a PET detection and degradation system. Our first module is the detection module. We replaced the extracellular sensor domain of the two-component system ENVZ with a binding domain capable of sensing PET. This enables the two-component system to detect extracellular PET signals and transduce them into the cell.
Our second module is a surface-displayed PET degradation module. This module responds to the signals transmitted by the detection module and initiates the expression of PETase and MHETase enzymes. We utilize a multi-enzyme system to co-express both enzymes together to maximize degradation efficiency.