ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Microbiotechnology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2025.1638208
An efficient bacterial laccase-mediated system for polyurethane foam degradation
Provisionally accepted
- Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Polyurethane (PU), a segmented block copolymer with chemically resistant urethane linkages and tunable architecture, presents persistent biological recycling challenges. This study presents a bacterial laccase-mediated system (BLMS) derived from Bacillus subtilis for efficient degradation of polyester-and polyether-PU. Utilizing the laccase CotA and mediator 2,2'-azino-bis (3ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid) (ABTS), the BLMS demonstrated effective depolymerization of both commercial and self-synthesized PU foams, including polyester-and polyether-types. The weight loss of the self-synthesized polyester-foam and the commercial polyether-foam reached up to 21.24 ± 1.20% and 3.81 ± 0.36%, respectively. Subsequently, we detected oxygenated products such as ketones, alcohols, aldehydes, acids, esters, ethers and 2,4toluenediamine (2,4-TDA) indicating that bacterial laccase CotA exhibited redox catalytic activity toward PU. Moreover, an interesting phenomenon was observed during the degradation process that the solution turned purple. We predicted that this attribute to the enzymatic oxidation of ABTS to the radical cation ABTS •+ , which subsequently reacts with 2,4-TDA to form the purple product.This study finds a plastic degrading enzyme capable of hydrolyzing urethane bonds in PU, offering a promising contribution to the development of a bio-based circular economy for PU biodegradation and recycling.
Keywords: polyurethane, Bacterial laccase CotA, ABTS, Degradation mechanism, color shift
Received: 30 May 2025; Accepted: 29 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhu, Duan, Lu, Xia, Peng, Liu, Dong and Jiang. 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:
Yujia Peng, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing, China
Jiawei Liu, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.