The Centre for Enzyme Innovation is a new initiative set up at the University of Portsmouth, with a goal to find solutions to some of the most pressing global environmental problems. In particular, we aim to examine environmental samples to find how the natural world has solved the problem of plastic pollution, by identifying microorganisms who have evolved to be able to break down plastics in the environment. By identifying these microorgansisms, and further understanding the enzymatic methods that they use towards this goal, we aim to harness the amazing work that nature has done, and find ways to enhance this and scale it up on an industrial scale to allow their use in circular recycling of plastics.
The Centre was recently awarded £5.8 million in funding from the Research England Expanding Excellence Fund. Together with significant investment from the University of Portsmouth, we aim to use this funding to speed up our progress towards finding a solution to one of the world’s greatest environmental challenges – plastic waste.
We will be working in the Discovery phase of the pipeline, aiming to use next generation Nanopore sequencing to explore microorganisms present on samples taken from environmental sites of interest (e.g. plastic receycling centres) to try and profile what is present and how they have developed to survive on plastic substrates. We aim to use this bioprospecting approach to explore metagenomics and metatranscriptomics of samples to identify mechanisms of action for plastic degaradation, and in particular to compare with previously explored species to identify what makes these species unique. This information, and information on the make-up of enzymes involved in the processes, will feed through the pipeline to be further engineered to create enzymes that can be scaled up on an industrial scale.