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Thermal properties of poly(3-hydroxy-2-methylbutyrate-co-3-hydroxybutyrate) copolymers with narrow comonomer-unit compositional distributions

Polymer Journal volume 53, pages 1451–1457 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Novel polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) copolymers of (2R,3R)-3-hydroxy-2-methylbutyrate (3H2MB) and (R)-3-hydroxybutyrate (3HB) [P(3H2MB-co-3HB)] with various comonomer compositions were biosynthesized using recombinant Escherichia coli LSBJ. Furthermore, solvent fractionation of biosynthesized P(24 mol% 3H2MB-co-3HB) was performed to obtain copolymers with narrow comonomer-unit compositional distributions. The melting temperature (Tm) of P(3H2MB-co-3HB) as a function of the comonomer content indicated isodimorphism of the copolymer. The fast crystallization behavior of P(3H2MB) was maintained even when it was copolymerized with 3HB. The P(80 mol% 3H2MB-co-3HB) copolymer, with a Tm close to that of P(3HB), exhibited faster crystallization behavior than the P(3HB) homopolymer. Therefore, copolymerization of 3H2MB and 3HB is valuable for the design of new PHA materials with desirable properties.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Prof. Christopher T. Nomura (University of Idaho) and Prof. Seiichi Taguchi (Tokyo University of Agriculture) for kindly gifting the E. coli strains LSBJ and PCT, respectively. This study was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (KAKENHI, 21H03640).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Yokohama, Japan

    Sho Furutate & Takeharu Tsuge

  2. Bioplastic Research Team, RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science, Wako, Saitama, Japan

    Hideki Abe

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  1. Sho Furutate
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  2. Hideki Abe
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  3. Takeharu Tsuge
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SF and TT designed the experiments. SF performed the experiments and analyzed the data. All the authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Takeharu Tsuge.

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Furutate, S., Abe, H. & Tsuge, T. Thermal properties of poly(3-hydroxy-2-methylbutyrate-co-3-hydroxybutyrate) copolymers with narrow comonomer-unit compositional distributions. Polym J 53, 1451–1457 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41428-021-00545-4

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