Watch: Plastic Biorefineries at the VII International Enzyme & Bioprocess Days
Beyond Recycling: Building Plastic Biorefineries with Enzymes and Microbial Cell Factories
Prof. Evangelos Topakas presented the work of the IndBioCat group at the VII International Enzyme & Bioprocess Days, held 26–28 August 2026 at Karadeniz Technical University in Trabzon, Türkiye. The full talk is now available to watch, with English subtitles.
Plastic production passed 400 million tonnes a year while the global recycling rate remains stuck below 10%. The talk argues that we cannot recycle our way out — and shows what enzymes and engineered microbes can do instead. The presentation traces a complete pipeline. It begins with enzyme discovery through genome mining and multi-omics analysis of fungal secretomes, which yielded polyesterases including DmPETase from Deinococcus maricopensis and Se1JFR from Streptomyces sp. It then follows two case studies to their conclusion. In the first, agricultural PBAT mulching films were degraded to 75% in a bench-scale bioreactor, and the recovered adipic acid was upcycled by Cupriavidus necator H16 into PHB — recovering terephthalic acid and butanediol along the way. In the second, C. necator was engineered to secrete a PCL depolymerase, so that polymer degradation, monomer uptake and biopolymer production all happen inside a single cell in one batch.
The closing message: enzyme selectivity can handle not only the valorization of mixed plastic waste, but its sorting too.
Work carried out within TwInn4MicroUp, with partners at the University of Belgrade (IMGGE), the University of Bari Aldo Moro, and the Technological University of the Shannon.
Funded by the European Union under Horizon Europe, Grant Agreement No 101159570. Views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Executive Agency.