Engineered microbe may be key to producing plastic from plants

“Lignin is the most abundant source—other than petroleum—of aromatic compounds on the planet,” Noguera says, like those used to manufacture chemicals and plastics from petroleum. Where other microbes pick and choose, N. aromaticivorans is a biological funnel for the aromatics in lignin. For now, the engineered variation on N. aromaticivorans can turn at least 59 percent of lignin’s potentially useful compounds into PDC.

Source: phys.org