Bioprospecting useful enzymes from Great Australian Artesian Basin thermophiles for plastic/plasticizer biorecycling and bioremediation
Plastics and their plasticizers are a known to pose a problem as environmental pollution and in recycling. Enzyme technologies are theorized to able to monomerize plastics and can be used to biorecycle plastics or bioremediate them out of a polluted environment. However, due to plastics recent introduction into the ecosystems their biotic degradation is not well established in microbial organisms and the field of plastic degrading enzymes is arising.Thermophiles collected from bore water in the Great Artesian Basin (GAB) of Australia are theorised to contain plastic degrading enzymes as thermophiles are in contact with hydrocarbon deposits, which have identical chemistry to plastics. Thermophiles from hot water (60C) have provided thermally robust enzymes, which have been beneficial in many industrial applications. Thus it is predicted that thermophiles from the GAB may contain plastic degrading enzymes which are thermostable and viable in industrial bioremediation or biorecycling.