The Plastics-Active Enzymes Database

Plastics are widely used in our economy and each year, at least 350-400 million tons are being produced at a global level. Due to poor recycling and low circular use, tens of millions of tons accumulate annually in marine and terrestrial environments. While it has become obvious that micro and macroplastics contaminate our environments recent research has identified few bacteria and fungi actively degrading plastics by enzymatic reactions. In general these are promiscuous enzymes (hydrolases) acting on low crystaline and mostly low density polymers of PET, ester-based PUR and oligomers of PA. Notably today, no enzymes have been characterized on a biochemical level for polymeric and crystaline PE, ether-based PUR, PS, PVC, PP. While many publications report on plastic degradation often, no convincing biochemical data have been published. Therefore the PAZy database lists exclusively biochemically characterized plastic-active enzymes. Predicted and putative enzymes that were not characterized on a biochemical, functional or structural level are not included in the PAZy database. The entries are manually curated.

塑料在我们的经济活动中应用广泛，全球每年至少生产3.5亿至4亿吨。由于回收处理不当及循环利用率低，每年都有数千万吨塑料在海洋和陆地环境中累积。尽管微塑料和宏观塑料污染环境的问题已日益凸显，但近期研究仅发现少数细菌和真菌通过酶促反应积极降解塑料。通常，这些酶为杂合酶（水解酶），作用于PET、基于酯的PUR以及PA的聚合物低结晶度和低密度聚合物。值得注意的是，目前尚无在生化水平上对聚乙烯、基于醚的PUR、PS、PVC、PP的聚合物和结晶性酶进行表征。尽管许多出版物经常报道塑料降解，但尚未公布令人信服的生化数据。因此，PAZy数据库仅列出已生化表征的塑料活性酶。未在生化、功能或结构水平上表征的预测和假想酶不包括在PAZy数据库中。条目均经人工编纂。