New approach boosts plastic-eating enzyme's activity nearly tenfold

Researchers from King's College London and Rutgers University in New Jersey created a modified enzyme that breaks down polyethylene terephthalate plastic 10 times quicker, using 10 times less enzyme. The science-journalism coverage adds useful context, while the strongest evidential footing still comes from the underlying data, papers or institutional documentation.

This matters because biology becomes more informative when an observed effect begins to look like a mechanism rather than an isolated pattern. The gap between identifying a correlation in biological data and understanding the causal chain that produces it is routinely underestimated, and the history of biomedical research is populated with associations that collapsed when the mechanism was sought and not found. A result that comes with a proposed mechanism, even a partial one, is more useful than a purely descriptive finding because it generates testable predictions that can narrow the hypothesis space. Researchers from King's College London and Rutgers University in New Jersey created a modified enzyme (a protein that speeds up chemical reactions) that breaks down polyethylene. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Add to Preferred Sources ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering (2026).

The method also worked on flakes cut from a used beverage bottle without having to first heat or otherwise prepare the plastic to make it easier to break down. In experiments using PET powder, the modified enzyme continued breaking down the plastic at a steady rate over seven days, rather than losing much of its activity after the first.

By comparison, the unmodified enzyme working in water lost activity substantially after the first day, with its activity lasting around 36 hours before declining. In these laboratory tests, the modified enzyme in the ionic liquid showed a 9.2-fold increase in the speed it was able to break the chemical links in the plastic.

Discover the latest in science, tech, and space with over 100, 000 subscribers who rely on Phys. org for daily insights. This estimate is based on results from previous studies using those enzymes, rather than experiments carried out in the current study.

The broader interest lies in whether the reported effect points toward a real mechanism and not merely a reproducible but unexplained association. Biology has learned from decades of biomarker failures that correlation, even robust correlation, is not a substitute for mechanistic understanding. A pathway that can be traced from molecular interaction to cellular response to organismal phenotype provides a far stronger foundation for intervention than a statistical association discovered in a large dataset, however well the statistics are done.

Alex Brogan, corresponding author and senior lecturer in chemistry at King's College London, said, "The research in my lab is aiming to provide new solutions to help us move away. Nicholson et al, Accelerating Depolymerization of Poly(ethylene terephthalate) Using Chemically Modified Cutinase and Ionic Liquids, ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering (2026).

Because this item comes through Phys. org Chemistry as science journalism, it should be treated as contextual reporting rather than primary evidence. Good science reporting can identify why a result matters, connect it to the wider literature and make technical work readable, but the decisive evidence remains in the original paper, dataset, mission release or technical record. That distinction is especially important when a story is later repeated by aggregators, because repetition increases visibility, not evidential strength.

The next step is to test whether the effect repeats across different methods, cell types, model organisms and experimental conditions. Reproducibility is the first test, but mechanistic dissection is the second, and a result that passes both has a substantially better chance of translating into something clinically or biotechnologically useful. The path from a laboratory finding to an applied outcome typically takes a decade or more, and most findings do not complete it; the current result sits at the beginning of that process.

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