Designer enzyme for green materials innovation: Lactate-polymerizing enzyme as a key catalyst

Abstract

Establishment of the regeneratable whole-cell catalyst platform for the production of biobased polymeric materials is a typical topic of synthetic biology. In this commentary, discovery story of a “lactate-polymerizing enzyme” (LPE) and LPE-based achievements for creating a new variety of polyesters with incorporated unnatural monomers are presented. Besides the importance of microbial platform itself is discussed referring to the “ballooning”-Escherichia coli.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

synthetic biology / enzyme evolutionary engineering / polyhydroxyalkanoate

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Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg