This Startup's AI Designs Enzymes That Can Eat Plastic Waste

Forbes

Landfills are overflowing with plastic trash. Serial inventor Jonathan Rothberg’s Protein Evolution found a solution: using AI to create enzymes that can recycle old polyester textiles into a material that acts new. Now the three-year-old company needs to prove that it can scale up.  Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/amyfeldman/2024/05/03/this-startups-ai-designs-enzymes-that-can-eat-plastic-waste/?sh=645b33dd45d4  Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1  Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:  https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript  Stay Connected Forbes newsletters: https://newsletters.editorial.forbes.com Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes More From Forbes:  http://forbes.com  Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.

Transcript

00:00 Here's your Forbes daily briefing for Sunday, May 5th.

00:05 Today on Forbes, this startup's AI designs enzymes that can eat plastic waste.

00:13 In a lab tucked away in an old gun factory in New Haven, Connecticut, a machine heated

00:18 plastic waste to 536 degrees Fahrenheit and spat out gloopy strings of material that start

00:25 to harden when they hit the air.

00:27 This substance, made of textiles and post-industrial scrap that were destined for a landfill, will

00:32 be ground to bits to create as much surface area as possible.

00:36 Why?

00:37 Well, it's about to become food for an enzyme designed with the help of artificial intelligence,

00:43 made by the startup Protein Evolution.

00:46 The company's ambition is to use AI to engineer new enzymes that are able to break down plastics

00:51 and plastic-based textiles.

00:54 Chief Technology Officer Jay Koneczka, who stood with a white lab coat next to a reactor

00:59 filled with enzymes and water, joked, "What happens next is we feed it to the sharks."

01:06 The enzymes and water in the reactor will break the plastics down to their core components.

01:11 The resulting material, what the company calls "biopure," is supposed to be indistinguishable

01:16 from polyester made from petroleum, and can be used the same way in fabrics.

01:22 Protein Evolution hopes its enzyme process will allow old clothes, sheets, and other

01:26 textiles to become fully recyclable.

01:30 The world has a serious plastics problem, with some 460 million tons total produced

01:36 annually, a number that will only rise as we buy more stuff.

01:40 Only 9% of plastic is actually recycled, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation

01:45 and Development.

01:47 The rest ends up in landfills or incinerated, and that's what Protein Evolution co-founder

01:52 Jonathan Rothberg said he wants to target.

01:55 He said, "You have to recycle the 91% that people don't recycle.

02:00 All this crap, all this mixed stuff, not the perfectly clean water bottles that have been

02:04 rinsed."

02:06 Rothberg is a serial inventor and entrepreneur who's best known for inventing and commercializing

02:11 high-speed DNA sequencing.

02:14 The 91% Rothberg is talking about is where scientists see potential for what's known

02:18 as biological recycling, using enzymes that break down plastic quickly without creating

02:24 microplastics or degrading the material in the process.

02:28 But the number of possible plastic-eating enzymes is greater than the atoms in the known

02:32 universe, which has made it difficult for researchers to make much headway.

02:37 Enter artificial intelligence.

02:39 Konechka said, "In the last five years, the world of enzyme engineering has blown open

02:45 because of AI."

02:48 Protein Evolution's proprietary AI model incorporates publicly available data on tens of thousands

02:53 of proteins that help it spew out thousands of amino acid sequences that represent new

02:58 enzymes.

03:00 Protein Evolution then uses algorithms, including the AlphaFold AI system developed by Google

03:05 DeepMind, that predicts a protein's structure from its amino acid sequence, and tests the

03:10 ones that look most promising in the lab's reactors.

03:14 Konechka said that when Protein Evolution started, 99% of the new enzymes the AI model

03:19 suggested were "garbage."

03:22 But as the team incorporated new information about what was working and what wasn't, over

03:26 time the AI model learned to design better plastic-devouring enzymes.

03:31 Konechka figures that he can continue to tweak the design so they'll work faster or at slightly

03:36 lower temperatures, making the entire process more efficient and cheaper.

03:41 Protein Evolution's co-founder, Connor Lin, who runs the business, said, "We've been focused

03:47 on cost from day one."

03:51 Armed with $25 million in venture funding and plans to raise at least that much more

03:56 this year, the three-year-old startup is gearing up to build a pilot plant that could produce

04:01 300 tons a year of recycled plastic in 2025.

04:05 After that, it hopes to build a commercial plant with capacity of 50,000 tons a year

04:10 in 2028.

04:12 The company is still in its early days, and scaling up comes with risk.

04:16 Today, Protein Evolution brings in only a small amount of revenue from development deals

04:21 with a handful of consumer brands, including British designer Stella McCartney.

04:26 To get to commercial scale, Protein Evolution will need to build out its 50,000-ton plant,

04:31 insert itself into the plastic waste disposable supply chain to get or buy enough material

04:35 to recycle, and keep its costs low enough that brands will be willing to buy its polyester.

04:43 For full coverage, check out Amy Feldman's piece on Forbes.com.

04:48 This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes.

04:50 Thanks for tuning in.

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