REVIEW article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Microbiotechnology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2025.1599470
This article is part of the Research TopicMetabolic Engineering and Synthetic Biology for Sustainable Microbial Cell FactoriesView all 5 articles
Efficient biodegradation and upcycling of polyethylene terephthalate mediated by cell-factories
Provisionally accepted
- 1Jining Medical University, Jining, China
- 2School of Pharmacy, Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China
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The pervasive accumulation of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) waste has emerged as a critical ecological crisis, which is mainly driven by its recalcitrance to natural degradation and widespread contamination of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. In response to this challenge, microbialmediated PET biodegradation has garnered significant scientific attentions as a sustainable remediation strategy, harnessing the enzymatic cascades of specialized microorganisms to depolymerize PET into bio-assimilable monomers such as terephthalic acid (TPA) and ethylene glycol (EG). In this review, we summarize the extracellular process of PET biodegradation, including microbial attachment, colonization, and direct depolymerization, as well as the metabolic pathways of PET monomers. Strategies for developing PET-degrading chassis cells are also discussed, such as cell surface display, metabolic pathway optimization, and rational design of enzyme-PET interfaces. Microbial-enzyme consortia and molecular engineering of photosynthetic microorganisms also contribute to PET
Keywords: Poly(ethylene terephthalate), microbial degradation, PETrecycling, Metabolic Engineering, Synthetic Biology, cell factory Mle046, Mle800, Mle267, Mle288 a marine microbial consortium 80, 82
Received: 25 Mar 2025; Accepted: 30 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 LIU, Wang, Liu, Xu and Pan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Tao Wang, Jining Medical University, Jining, China
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