Team:Evry/Home trial
Presentation of the Project
280 million tons: it’s the average plastic amount product each year worldwide (what means 8,880 kilograms per second)! 1,000 years: it’s the average duration of a plastic bottle! Up to 450 years: it’s the time needed for the degradation of a plastic bag in the environment. For these reasons, our team thought about working on a biological alternative to the plastic: the PLA!
PLA, or polylactic acid, is a totally biodegradable polymer and a thermoplastic. It’s currently used as food packaging but also in other applications such as, for example, the sutures in surgery. Around 80 days are estimated to be sufficient instead of 1000 years for the degradation of a bottle of PLA.
Our objective for iGEM 2016, is to produce a significant amount of PLA solely by biological way by using Pseudomonas putida . This will enable an ecological and inexpensive synthesis, just from simple sugars.
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