Photo of the Week: Accelerating Discovery of Tailored Industrial Enzymes

Degrading single-use plastic into molecular building blocks for recycling is expensive and energy-intensive. Current enzymes (natural catalysts) are not fast or efficient enough to support recycling under industrial conditions. Traditional enzyme discovery is slow, requiring testing individual enzymes. Los Alamos National Laboratory developed Platform to Accelerate Discovery of Tailored Industrial Enzymes (PAD-TIE) to quickly engineer enzymes with enhanced function, including plastic degradation. The patent-pending platform provides high throughput, simultaneous screening of tens of thousands of enzyme variants to seek the parameters critical for industrial needs. Its low-cost, simple operation makes PAD-TIE a powerful tool to create impactful enzymes for many biotechnology applications.

Photo Credit: Hau Nguyen, Encarnita Rivera, and Allen Hopkins - Los Alamos National Laboratory