John McGeehan

John McGeehan is a Scottish research scientist and professor of structural biology. He was director of the Centre for Enzyme Innovation (CEI) at the University of Portsmouth until 2022 and is now a principal scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Colorado, US.

In 2018, McGeehan co-led an international team of scientists who characterized and engineered an enzyme with the ability to breakdown polyethylene terephthalate (PET), the primary material used in the manufacture of single-use plastic bottles and synthetic textiles. The bacteria that produces this enzyme, ''Ideonella sakaiensis'', was originally discovered and isolated in a recycling plant by a Japanese research group in 2016.

The team at Portsmouth University, together with researchers at NREL and the University of South Florida, solved the high-resolution structure of the PETase enzyme using X-ray crystallography at the Diamond Light Source and used the structure to design improved versions of the enzyme. The initial research story was covered widely in the press (The Times, The Guardian, and The Economist) and television media (BBC, ITV, CNN, CBS, Al Jazeera, and HBO), reaching a global audience of over 2 billion people. The published research was highlighted in the Altmetric Top 100 of all published papers in 2018 and 2020.

Plastics, including PET, while incredibly versatile, are resistant to natural breakdown and represent an increasing source of pollution in the environment. Enzymes offer potential routes to breakdown plastics into their original monomers to allow circular recycling. The team continues to make further improvements to these enzymes through the characterisation of natural bacterial systems followed by protein engineering in the laboratory. Their latest work employs the use of AlphaFold from DeepMind ([https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/creating-plastic-eating-enzymes-that-could-save-us-from-pollution/ video]) to uncover the 3D structures of alternative PETases, and other enzymes. A driving force for the team is the use of technoeconomic analysis and life-cycle assessment to guide their research direction, and help understand the economic and environmental impacts of new recycling technologies. Their current focus is on the development of circular systems and industrially scalable processes that reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, and mitigate environmental pollution. Provided by Wikipedia