Tacc Podcasts

Plastic waste is a big problem in the environment. About 300 million tons of plastic waste are produced every year, according to the United Nations. Much of that is polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a plastic in single-use bottles, carpets, and clamshell packaging. In the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency estimates annually that only about 29 percent of PET bottles are recycled. In 2016, Japanese scientists discovered that the bacteria Ideonella sakaiensis had evolved digestive enzymes called PETase that breakdown PET. And in October of 2020, a study came out in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It used supercomputers allocated by XSEDE, the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment. They revealed more about a sidekick enzyme, called MHETase, that helps PETase breakdown PET plastic. Stampede2 here at TACC; Comet at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, and the Eagle system of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory were use in the PETase-MHETase study. While dealing wit