The plastic emergency

Plastics are essential materials in our lives, but they show a problem: they are difficult to degrade. As a consequence, 79% of the plastic waste is stored in landfills or released into the environment.

Taking advantage of microbes

Some bacteria can degrade common plastics such as polyethylene (PET) or polyurethane (PU) by secreting enzymes. In addition, certain species can be modified to use these materials as food to obtain energy.

A circular solution

MIPLACE will develop a process that uses plastic waste as a feedstock for engineered microbial communities. These microbes will transform it into the raw materials used to create a sustainable plastic, Bio-PU, that can enter the cycle once thrown away.

LATEST NEWS

New Pseudomonas putida publications

25/01/23 - Congratulations to Dr Jose Jimenez and Dr Alice Banks (MIPLACE partners) and colleagues on the publication of two papers describing studies with Pseudomonas putida.  This is an important [...]

Q & As on emerging biotechnological applications

14/12/22 - Dr Jose Jimenez, MIPLACE coordinator, recently took part in a Q & A session regarding emerging biotechnologies and their applications.  The interview was organized for SECRETed, a project [...]

Introducing MIPLACE to SBA Perth

12/12/22 - MIPLACE coordinator, Jose Jimenez, recently gave a talk on the MIPLACE project to the members of SBA Perth, the western Australia node of Synthetic Biology Australasia (SBA).  SBA [...]

Congratulations on recent PhD success 🏆

12/12/22 - Many congratulations to Umar Abdulmutalib from the University of Surrey for recently passing his PhD viva.  Umar's work and thesis 'Engineering microbial strains for polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic [...]

New article on the enzymatic degradation of PET

15/11/22 - Our partners from the University of Leipzig and their colleagues from the Helmholtz Centre Dresden-Rossendorf have recently published an article on the enzymatic degradation of PET.  The article, [...]

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PARTNERS

MIPLACE project is funded under the 2nd ERA BioTech Joint Transnational Call