Calendar Summary Bulletin Diary View
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
Tickets / Register:
Shared From:
Association of IVCs (AIVC)
This event is hosted and arranged by William Vine, the Group Organiser for Winchester Cafe Scientifique. 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.
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 You will need the Zoom client installed on your computer, tablet or phone. Short video on using Zoom here:
Contact Details:
William Vine, Winchester Cafe Sci (Promoted by Bob Clifford, Basingstoke IVC Cafe Sci Organiser)
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