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Degradable living plastics programmed by engineered spores

Nature Chemical Biology (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Plastics are widely used materials that pose an ecological challenge because their wastes are difficult to degrade. Embedding enzymes and biomachinery within polymers could enable the biodegradation and disposal of plastics. However, enzymes rarely function under conditions suitable for polymer processing. Here, we report degradable living plastics by harnessing synthetic biology and polymer engineering. We engineered Bacillus subtilis spores harboring the gene circuit for the xylose-inducible secretory expression of Burkholderia cepacia lipase (BC-lipase). The spores that were resilient to stresses during material processing were mixed with poly(caprolactone) to produce living plastics in various formats. Spore incorporation did not compromise the physical properties of the materials. Spore recovery was triggered by eroding the plastic surface, after which the BC-lipase released by the germinated cells caused near-complete depolymerization of the polymer matrix. This study showcases a method for fabricating green plastics that can function when the spores are latent and decay when the spores are activated and sheds light on the development of materials for sustainability.

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Fig. 1: Design of the living plastics.
Fig. 2: The spores were resilient to environmental perturbations.
Fig. 3: Spores were engineered to secrete PCL-degrading enzymes.
Fig. 4: Fabrication of living PCL films.
Fig. 5: Fabrication of living PCL objects by fused filament fabrication.

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Data availability

The data processed for figure generation in this study are available within the paper and the Supplementary Information. Any additional information is available upon request. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

No new code was generated for this study.

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Acknowledgements

We thank B. An and J. Sun for providing the chassis strain and assisting with spore engineering. We thank P. Chen, T. Meng, J. Yi and J. Yan from the Nano and Advanced Materials Institute Limited (Hong Kong, China) for providing technical support and facilities for the single-screw extruder manufacturing experiment. We thank J. Xu for his assistance in synthesizing CL-4. We thank J. Zhang for her assistance in the experimental setup. This study was partially supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2020YFA0908100 to Z.D.), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (3222047 and 32071427 to Z.D.; 32101185 to J.L.), the Guangdong Natural Science Funds for Distinguished Young Scholars (2022B1515020077 to Z.D.) and the Shenzhen Science and Technology Program (ZDSYS20220606100606013 and KQTD20180413181837372 to Z.D.). We are grateful to the Shenzhen Infrastructure for Synthetic Biology for providing instrument support and technical assistance.

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  1. These authors contributed equally: Lin Wang, Jing Sun.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Quantitative Synthetic Biology, Shenzhen Institute of Synthetic Biology, Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China

    Chenwang Tang, Lin Wang, Junfeng Shen, Ying Han, Jiren Luo, Simin Zeng & Zhuojun Dai

  2. MIIT Key Laboratory of Critical Materials Technology for New Energy Conversion and Storage; National and Local Joint Engineering Laboratory for Synthesis, Transformation and Separation of Extreme Environmental Nutrients, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China

    Chenwang Tang, Jing Sun & Dianpeng Qi

  3. Center of Neural Engineering, CAS Key Laboratory of Human-Machine Intelligence-Synergy Systems, Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China

    Jing Sun

  4. Department of Mechanical and Energy Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China

    Guangda Chen, Pei Zhang & Ji Liu

  5. Center for Polymers in Medicine, Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China

    Liang Wang, Zhiying Li & Jin Geng

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Contributions

C.T., Lin Wang and J. Sun designed and performed the experiments, interpreted the results and revised the paper. G.C., J. Shen and Liang Wang performed the experiments. Y.H., J.L., Z.L., P.Z. and S.Z. assisted in experimental setup, revision and data interpretation. D.Q., J.G. and J.L. assisted in research design and experimental setup. Z.D. conceptualized the research, designed the experiments, interpreted the results and wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Zhuojun Dai.

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Nature Chemical Biology thanks David Karig and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Tang, C., Wang, L., Sun, J. et al. Degradable living plastics programmed by engineered spores. Nat Chem Biol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41589-024-01713-2

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