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Win Cafe Sci: Recycling of plastics with enzymes
Mon 5 Jul 2021 at 19:30 to 21:00  
Meeting / Address:
Prior Registration Required for Zoom
Shared From:
Association of IVCs (AIVC)

This event is hosted and arranged by William Vine, the Group Organiser for Winchester Cafe Scientifique.

Basingstoke IVC science enthusiasts invite you to this talk on a very interesting subject. The subject of this evenings talk is “Looking to nature for solutions: recycling of plastics with enzymes”.

WinCafeSci is Online, so if you missed a talk or would like to go over some of it again you can watch here on our YouTube channel.

If you would like to support, you can find the virtual PayPal sweetie jar (https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/WinCafeSci)

Your participation provides the motivation to continue. Suggestions for future speakers are welcome.

Register here for the talk and to participate in the discussion on Zoom:

https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAscOCvqDojHN24ABewcQqFtIfbtpZIc41i?fbclid=IwAR1AI4k_lJUswr8iYAVFjPtkL90xdAQFR8Dq36GWlEbuIW0A_qerIsD9Hvk


A free Zoom account is great if you want to participate. If that is not for you, you can watch on YouTube Live from your normal browser.

SUMMARY

John is a Professor of Structural Biology focused on the global challenge of plastic pollution and leads a team of scientists researching natural enzyme discovery and engineering. Their work revealed the detailed workings of an enzyme that can digest polyethylene terephthalate (PET), and more recently, demonstrated that engineering these enzymes can increase the speed of breakdown.

Found in single-use drinks bottles, packaging, clothing and carpets, PET can take centuries to decompose, and together with other plastics, is accumulating in our environment at a staggering rate. A biological catalyst that can break PET down into its original building blocks opens new opportunities for recycling towards a circular plastics economy.

Their work on PET-digesting enzymes has been widely covered in the media following two key papers in 2018 and 2020 in the journal PNAS, and the project received the Times Higher Education STEM Research Project of the Year in 2019. The group is rapidly expanding due to a £6 million grant from Research England which has allowed the recruitment of 15 additional researchers for the new Centre for Enzyme Innovation (www.port.ac.uk/cei).

The focus of the group remains the engineering of biological catalysis for the breakdown of a wide range of natural and synthetic polymers. The group recently joined the BOTTLE (www.BOTTLE.org) consortium which offers new opportunities for true interdisciplinary research across the diverse areas required to tackle the global plastic pollution crisis.

SPEAKER
Prof John McGeehan 
John graduated from the University of Glasgow in 1993, with a BSc (Hons) degree in Microbiology, before going on to complete a PhD in Virology at the MRC Virology Unit, Glasgow. His research career continued at the University of York, before joining the University of Portsmouth in 2000, working on DNA-binding proteins. In 2005, he completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship with the EMBL-Grenoble, France, researching crystallography at the large European synchrotron. In 2007, he re-joined the University of Portsmouth as an RCUK Fellow, was appointed to Reader in 2012 and Professor in 2016. He founded the Centre for Enzyme Innovation in 2019 as Director.

You will need the Zoom client installed on your computer, tablet or phone.

Short video on using Zoom here:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/hIkCmbvAHQQ?rel=0&autoplay=1&cc_load_policy=1

Only one ticket needed per screen. If you are sharing with someone, they don’t need a separate ticket.

We will open the meeting from 7pm so people can settle in, chat etc. There will be a break between talk and Q&A when people can chat etc. It's not the same as live but closer than I thought

A recording will be available after the event on YouTube.

Our Facebook Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/wincafesci/?source_id=1457090591178602 provides an opportunity to share ideas and keep in touch. You are encouraged to post interesting science links and to comment or discuss.

Contact Details:
William Vine, Winchester Cafe Sci (Promoted by Bob Clifford, Basingstoke IVC Cafe Sci Organiser)
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