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Can polymer-degrading microorganisms solve the bottleneck of plastics' environmental challenges?
Summary
This review asks whether plastic-degrading microorganisms can meaningfully address the global plastic pollution problem. Researchers surveyed known biodegradation pathways and found that while promising microbes and enzymes exist, real-world applications remain limited by slow degradation rates and narrow substrate specificity. They highlight how omics and synthetic biology tools could accelerate development of practical bioremediation solutions.
Increasing world population and industrial activities have enhanced anthropogenic pollution, plastic pollution being especially alarming. So, plastics should be recycled and/or make them biodegradable. Chemical and physical remediating methods are usually energy consuming and costly. In addition, they are not ecofriendly and usually produce toxic byproducts. Bioremediation is a proper option as it is cost-efficient and environmentally friendly. Plastic production and consumption are increasing daily, and, as a consequence, more microorganisms are exposed to these nonbiodegradable polymers. Therefore, investigating new efficient microorganisms and increasing the knowledge about their biology can pave the way for efficient and feasible plastic bioremediation processes. In this sense, omics, systems biology and bioinformatics are three important fields to analyze the biodegradation pathways in microorganisms. Based on the above-mentioned technologies, researchers can engineer microorganisms with specific desired properties to make bioremediation more efficient.