Huge shout out to the amazing #Enzyclic team for making this research possible Gustav Vaaje-Kolstad Gordon Jacob Boehlich, Ørjan Dahl, Ravindra Reddy Chowreddy, Anton Stepnov 🎉

🦠Overall, soil microbial communities can only utilize small compounds such as alkanes and ketones derived from abiotic degradation of polyethylene, but they cannot transform the plastic polymer itself.

🔷 Through metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, and proteomics, we show that soil microbes use a broad arsenal of monooxygenases that enable them to metabolize alkanes and ketones found in oxidized polyethylene substrates.

🎈 It is important to thoroughly characterize the substrate before and after microbial growth, before making claims of microbial degradation of polyethylene. Substrates may already contain small compounds “out of the box,” before any experimental treatment.