How ‘super’ enzymes can transform recycling

Most recycled plastic becomes lower-quality products—carpets, planters—before ending up in landfill. The Conversation reports that scientists at the University of Manchester engineered an enzyme to break polycarbonate, a hard plastic found in safety glasses and electronics, back to its original building blocks. The challenge: enzymes typically break down under the seventy-degree heat needed to soften plastic. Scientists solved this by studying extremophiles, microbes thriving in volcanoes and deep-sea hot springs, whose heat-resistant proteins provided a blueprint. They used directed evolution—rapid mutation and selection in the lab—to train the enzyme to work on synthetic materials, and AI can now accelerate this process by predicting which structural changes optimize performance. The upshot: super-enzymes stable at those temperatures could unlock a circular economy, reducing crude oil extraction and potentially extending to textiles, electronics, and astronaut waste.

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