Investigating the effect of metal-site substitutions on thermal stability and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) depolymerization activity on leaf-branch compost cutinase (LCC) | Poster Board #3782

Plastic is a synthetic polymer with high material properties, which has tremendous applications that facilitate modern life. Petroleum-derived Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is the third most widely used synthetic polymer to produce textiles, fibers, film, single-use bottles, and packaging materials. Despite its numerous applications, plastic has become a threat to the environment and human health due to ineffective plastic waste management. The current mechanical recycling approaches of waste plastic do not achieve the full circling of the materials due to inferior properties of the recycled products. Plastic upcycling is depolymerizing PET into higher-value products. PET depolymerization catalyzed by microorganism enzymes is shown to be a promising route for plastic upcycling. While the search for novel enzymes continues, two important problems related to already discovered enzymes are of current interest, i.e. to increase the enzyme’s thermal stability and to explore ways to improve the crystalline PET degradation efficiency by structural modifications. Recent studies found that the PET degradation efficiency of Leafbranch Compost Cutinase (LCC) can be enhanced by active site mutations. Thermal stability of mutated LCC is achieved by adding disulfide bonds at the active site. In the present work, based on the results from Molecular Docking and Molecular Dynamics simulations and in vivo and in vitro experiments, we will present the effect of metal-site substitutions by divalent ions on the thermal stability and catalytic activity of already suggested engineered LCC configurations.