Enzymes Recycling Plastic
A French startup is poised to solve most of the world’s recycling conundrums with a new process that uses enzymes to break down the most problematic PET plastics (like contaminated black food trays) into a form so pure that it can be used to make clear water bottles that look and act like those made from petroleum.
The company, Carbios, envisions a circular plastic economy where nothing is wasted—and they have the money and backing from major global corporations to make it happen.
In the midst of an insanely productive year, the ‘biorecycling’ company secured two U.S. patents for its proprietary enzymatic process to break-down, purify, and reuse a wide array of PET plastic waste—only a small fraction of which is currently recycled. They plan to license the technology to recycling companies, and already have.
The green chemistry company wrapped up funding for the construction of a new recycling plant that will use enzymes to biorecycle—all at once, and in a few hours—multicolored plastic, like food trays or polyester shirts—for which the recycling rate is close to zero.
Another global problem is the sheer volume of recycled plastic needed to satisfy the many multinational consumer-products corporations that under extreme pressure to reduce their plastic waste.
Carbios is keen to satisfy the need and has established strategic partnerships with companies like Nestlé Waters, PepsiCo, L’Oréal, and Suntory Beverage & Food Europe, all of whom want to help get the recycling technology to market more quickly. The corporations are supporting the startup with funding and expertise.
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Currently, PET bottles, normally coded with the identification code number ‘1’ inside a recycling symbol on the bottom of the container, can be shredded and used to make lower grade products, such as carpets, Addidas shoes, and graduations gowns, but to make a food grade plastic, the bottles need to be hydrolyzed down to monomers, and then purified—which is exactly what Carbios does in a process they describe as an infinite loop.
To this end, in February 2019, Carbios announced it had successfully produced the first PET-bottles made with 100% Purified Terephthalic Acid, the organic compound used to make PET packaging and products, through the enzymatic recycling of plastic waste. This major milestone is a world-first and confirms the potential of the company’s technology to engage the whole industry in a responsible transition towards a circular economy.
The company says its enzyme process uses lower temperatures than other new tech, which use biological processes to break down plastic, which reduces energy consumption—and it doesn’t use solvents.
World’s Largest Holocaust Archive is Now Making Their Records Available to Everyone on the Internet
For years, the Arolsen Archives has collected and housed more than 30 million documents on the people who fell victim to Nazi persecution during WWII—and they are now available to the public for free.
The Arolsen Archives, which is the world’s largest archive on Holocaust victims, recently partnered with Ancestry.com in order to digitize and publish all of their records on the internet.
The documents include everything from passenger lists of displaced persons; registers of people living in Germany who were persecuted by public institutions and corporations; and even burial information for the deceased.
All of the records are now viewable on the Ancestry website so that they can be preserved and made available for future generations.
“It is more important than ever to show what can happen if these values about solidarity, about equality, about respect are not upheld,” Arolsen Archive Director Floriane Azoulay told Great Big Story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=l42DhnDtgc0
New Antiviral Drug Shown to Be ‘Highly Effective’ in Treating All Flu Strains in Animals and Human Tissue
According to a study by the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State University, the antiviral drug blocks RNA polymerase, the enzyme that plays a central role in replicating the genome of influenza virus, causing mutations in the viral genome. If enough mutations occur, the genome becomes nonfunctional and the virus cannot replicate. The findings were published online in Science Translational Medicine last week.
“The compound is highly efficacious against influenza,” said Dr. Richard Plemper, senior author of the study and a professor in the Institute for Biomedical Sciences. “It’s orally available, it’s broad spectrum against all influenza virus strains tested, and most important it establishes a high barrier against viral escape from inhibition.”
In the study, the new antiviral drug was tested in ferrets, the most informative animal model for human influenza disease, against various strains that include seasonal and pandemic viruses, such as the swine-origin influenza virus responsible for a 2009 pandemic. The researchers found that the antiviral drug efficiently inhibited replication of all of these strains. Virus burden dropped rapidly after treatment, and the duration of fever was significantly shorter in treated ferrets than in control animals that did not receive the drug.
“We think that the next generation of influenza antiviral drugs must not only be efficacious and safe, but also address the resistance problem,” said Dr. Mart Toots, first author of the study and a research assistant professor associated with Dr. Plemper’s lab in the Institute for Biomedical Sciences.
That is where the new drug comes in. Through a combination of conventional and ultra-deep sequencing, Toots has demonstrated in collaboration with Dr. Alex Greninger at the University of Washington that it is very challenging for the virus to find a viable way to avoid the compound.
“We have not identified specific resistance mutations yet and are confident to say that the genetic barrier against viral resistance is high,” Plemper said. “We believe that this compound has high clinical potential as a next-generation influenza drug that combines key antiviral features.”
This research on the compound, EIDD-2801, emerged from collaboration among Georgia State’s Institute for Biomedical Sciences and researchers at The Emory Institute of Drug Development (EIDD) and Drug Innovation Ventures at Emory who originally discovered the compound.
EIDD-2801 has entered formal preclinical development and clinical testing is expected to start in 2020.
(Dr. Mart Toots,:ttr: , that must've been a fun name to grow up with...)