https://video.igem.org/videos/watch/bdaa70c9-465b-4fb7-8eb3-4305956d09d1 Title: Melanify: Upcycling PET into Protective Melanin Description: PET plastic has become deeply embedded in modern consumer culture, appearing in nearly every aspect of our daily lives. Yet, millions of tonnes of PET plastic still evade recycling each year. The reality is that conventional PET recycling is often inefficient and economically unattractive. Each recycling cycle can degrade polymer quality, limiting how many times the material can be effectively reused before its performance declines. But our solution rewrites the economics: our two host cascade turns consumer plastic into allomelanin, a high-value UV shielding biomaterial. Pichia pastoris secretes a thermostable hydrolase to crack the polymer, glycosylating the enzyme at the same time to increase its thermal stability. The resulting monomers are then utilized by engineered Escherichia coli with surface displays of downstream pathway enzymes to efficiently convert PET derived intermediates into a valuable pigment. Wiki | Official Page Tue, 01 Sep 2026 16:54:53 GMT https://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html PeerTube - https://video.igem.org https://video.igem.org/client/assets/images/icons/icon-1500x1500.png https://video.igem.org/videos/watch/bdaa70c9-465b-4fb7-8eb3-4305956d09d1 All rights reserved, unless otherwise specified in the terms specified at https://video.igem.org/about and potential licenses granted by each content's rightholder.