In a new study, a group of scientists found a new way to produce a medicine for Parkinson’s, from used plastic.
A team led by researchers at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland used bacteria Escherichia coli specially modified to transform plastic into a drug, in a sustainable way.
The plastic in question is polyethylene terephthalate (or PET)widely used in plastic bottles and other packaging.
The medicine, in turn, is the levodopaoften called the “gold standard” for managing the motor control problems that accompany MDD. Parkinson.
Not only could the new method help reduce (however slightly) the plastic pollution crisis, but it also offers a path to developing ecological medicines – as current methods for producing levodopa rely heavily on fossil fuels.
“This work demonstrates how biological engineering can transform plastic-derived aromatic monomers into high-value pharmaceuticals for treating neurological diseases in humans,” the researchers write in the paper recently in Nature Sustainability.
As Science Alert details, the new process, PET was broken down into its constituent parts, including terephthalic acid (TPA) which will eventually be converted.
By building a new metabolic pathway in E. coli – a chemical chain reaction, driven by enzymes – researchers managed to make bacteria absorb TPA and convert it to levodopausing two bacterial strains running one after the other.
“This is just the beginning. If we can create medicines for neurological diseases from a used plastic bottle, it’s exciting to imagine what else this technology could achieve,” he said. Stephen Wallacebiotechnologist at the University of Edinburgh, for Science Alert.
“Plastic waste is often seen as an environmental problem, but it also represents a vast unexplored carbon source. By applying biological engineering to transform plastic into an essential medicine, we show how waste materials can be reinterpreted as valuable resources that support human health,” he added.
Researchers from the same laboratory at the University of Edinburgh had previously demonstrated how E. coli could be modified to transform . This type of techniques has a lot of potential in terms of starting and arriving chemical compounds.
