Talk Overview

Most plastic is derived from crude oil. Synthesis of plastics and their accumulation in oceans and landfills lead to bad environmental consequences. One solution to this problem is to create biodegradable plastics from biomass using bacteria. These bacteria can be engineered into plastic producers using synthetic biology tools. The Synthetic Biology in Action course participants tried this approach, and, in this video, they explain the experiments that led to the production of a biodegradable plastic.

About the Speaker

Luis Carreira, PhD student at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology

Nico Claassens, PhD student at Wageningen University

Valeriy Paramonov, PhD student at the Turku Centre for Biotechnology

Cordelia Rampley, PhD, Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Oxford