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Bacteria Intrinsically Orchestrated with Designed Enzymes for sinerGistic Rate-Accelerated plastic Degradation Efficiency

Objective

Plastics are one of the most widely used materials, with a wide variety of applications across all sectors of the economy. Its production is estimated to be around 360 million tonnes, and thus synthetic polymer is poorly biodegradable. Plastic life cycle is responsible for greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to climate change, plastic waste has been found in every ecosystem, are broken down into small pieces, microplastics, which can have a negative impact on organisms, and altogether causing an unprecedented ecological crisis.

We aim to tackle this problem through Bacteria Intrinsically Orchestrated with Designed Enzymes for sinerGistic Rate-Accelerated plastic Degradation Efficiency (BIO DEGRADE) project, using a novel application of biotechnological-based approaches to synergistically increase the efficiency limits of multi-enzymatic solutions. The project will perform genomic modification of microorganisms with their own evolved collection of computationally-engineered proteins for (micro)plastic degradation. We are not engineering single enzymes to enhance their catalytic activities, as it will computationally design multitude (hundreds) of proteins from the microorganism, and boost them with extra catalytic sites making them into plurizymes. The additional active sites able to degrade plastics will designed into the proteins employing advanced molecular simulation techniques such Protein Energy Landscape Exploration (PELE) together with machine learning methods. In this way, the proteins will not be from other microbial origin (heterologous), but their homologous proteins, to which an extra active-site capable of hydrolysing microplastics will be designed and genetically added, not altering the gene expression pattern of the microorganisms. These organisms will outperform the use of single enzymes because of the synergistic action of multiple evolved enzymes with one common goal: (micro)plastic degradation.

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Keywords

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

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Funding Scheme

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HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships

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Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2022-PF-01

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Coordinator

BARCELONA SUPERCOMPUTING CENTER CENTRO NACIONAL DE SUPERCOMPUTACION
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 226 441,20
Address
CALLE JORDI GIRONA 31
08034 BARCELONA
Spain

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Region
Este Cataluña Barcelona
Activity type
Research Organisations
Links
Total cost

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Partners (2)

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