Surface-engineered bacteria for plastic adhesion and degradation

The global plastic waste crisis has triggered the development of new methods to remove recalcitrant polymers from the environment. Biotechnological approaches have received particular attention due to their potential for enabling sustainable, low-intensity bioprocesses which could also be interfaced with microbial upcycling pathways to support the emerging circular bioeconomy. However, biodegradation efficiency remains a bottleneck, especially at mesophilic conditions required for one-pot degradation and upcycling. A challenge inherent to plastic degradation is reaction heterogeneity, where a solid phase plastic substrate must interact with a solvated biocatalyst. This is overcome in nature by localisation of plastic-degrading microbes to the plastic surface via biofilm-mediated surface association, offering a promising suite of tools for biotechnological exploitation to accelerate plastic biodegradation. This talk will discuss our recent work in engineering bacteria to adhere to plastic surfaces via extracellular display of filamentous proteins, and present some preliminary data for their future applications in polyester degradation and microplastics aggregation.