Novel polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic degrading enzymes from
the environmental metagenome
Abstract
Several plastic degrading enzymes have been described in the literature,
most notably PETases that are capable of hydrolyzing polyethylene
terephthalate (PET) plastic. One of them, the PETase from Ideonella
sakaiensis, a bacterium isolated from environmental samples within a PET
bottle recycling site, was the subject of extensive studies. To test how
widespread PETase functionality is in other bacterial communities, we
used a cascade of BLAST searches in the JGI metagenomic datasets and
showed that PETases can also be found in other metagenomic environmental
samples from both human affected and relatively pristine sites. To
confirm their classification as PETases, we verified that the newly
identified proteins have the PETase sequence signatures common to all
PETases and that phylogenetic analyses group them with the
experimentally characterized PETases. Additionally, docking analysis was
performed in order to further confirm the functional assignment of the
putative environmental PETases.