Shanghai Jiaotong University established a carbon dioxide one-step synthesis method of PLA

PLA, a non-natural polyester, is considered one of the most promising "green plastics" due to its excellent properties such as biocompatibility, biodegradability, and high mechanical strength
.
PLA has been widely used in single-use plastic products
.
In addition, PLA can also be widely used in chemical, medical, pharmaceutical and 3D printing industries
.
There is now a growing recognition that PLA polyester will play a key role in solving the problem of plastic pollution
.

To date, PLA has mainly been produced by chemical processes consisting of the ring-opening polymerization of lactide (a cyclic dimer of lactic acid) or the direct polymerization of lactic acid
.
Unfortunately, lactide and lactic acid production methods require sugar-based feedstocks, leading to resource competition between PLA production and food supply
.
Therefore, non-edible materials must be used as raw materials for PLA production
.
Excessive carbon dioxide emissions contribute to global warming and climate change due to industrial activities and the continued use of fossil fuels
.
At the same time, carbon dioxide is also one of the most abundant natural carbon resources and has recently been recognized as an ideal feedstock for third-generation biorefineries
.
Therefore, it is wise to produce PLA directly from carbon dioxide
.

Recently, researcher Tao Fei of Shanghai Jiaotong University is the corresponding author, and Tan Chunlin, a doctoral student of Shanghai Jiaotong University, is the first author of the paper.
The paper "Direct carbon capture of cyanobacterial cell factories for the production of high-performance biodegradable plastics" was published in "Green Chemisty".
Using cyanobacterial cells as chassis cells and carbon dioxide as raw material, PLA was successfully synthesized directly
.
Through the combination of systems metabolic engineering and high-density culture strategies, the efficiency of PLA synthesis by cyanobacterial cell factories was increased by about 270-fold
.