Dimitra S Bezantakou

Targeted mining of plastic-associated metagenomes uncovers a novel thermostable PETase expanding scaffold space for engineering

A targeted mining workflow is developed that screens exclusively plastic-associated datasets through multi-step bioinformatic filtering—integrating catalytic-motif screening, disulfide-topology validation, structural-similarity scoring, and phylogenetic profiling—to recover high-confidence PETase candidates, resulting in a thermostable enzyme that depolymerizes PET across a broad temperature range.