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Enhancement of heat resistance of drives enhanced PET degradation.
Summary
Scientists engineered bacteria to better survive heat by boosting a natural "heat-shield" protein, making them nearly twice as effective at breaking down PET plastic (the material in water bottles) at higher temperatures. This matters because plastic pollution—including the microplastics that end up in our water, food, and bodies—is a growing health concern, and heat-resistant, plastic-eating microbes could offer a more practical, real-world tool for cleaning it up.
Microbial polyethylene terephthalate (PET) degradation has emerged as an environmentally friendly approach to reducing plastic pollution, but microbial activity is often limited by the high temperatures (60-70 °C) required for efficient degradation. In this study, six endogenous thermotolerant genes were identified in the PET-degrading strain JQ3. Overexpression of the genes and significantly enhanced thermotolerance in , which increased cell viability by >24.2% at temperatures above 40 °C. Similarly, overexpression of in (_Hsp20A) improved its thermotolerance, increasing cell viability by 46.8% at 50 °C and 69.8% at 60 °C. The -encoded protein was identified as a small heat shock protein (sHSP). _Hsp20A exhibited significantly improved PET degradation at 60 °C compared with 50 °C, which released 282 µg of terephthalic acid after 7 days of incubation, representing an 84.3% increase compared with the wildtype strain (153 µg). These results highlight that the overexpression of thermotolerant proteins, particularly sHSPs, significantly enhances microbial PET degradation under high-temperature conditions, offering a novel pathway for enhancing microbial PET waste degradation.