New species Pseudomonas capeferrum TDA1 as a plastic monomer utilizer and a PHA native producer

Abstract Over the decades, global plastic production has been exponentially increasing with a significant increase of plastic waste as well. Consequently, our environment has suffered a lot because synthetic plastic is less biodegradable or even not completely biodegradable. On the other hand, the conventional recycling rate and plastic management in the top ten plastic contributors are still low to reduce the contamination and pollution from plastic waste. Particularly, Indonesia, one of the world’s most outstanding emerging market economies and has the most contribution on plastic waste in ASEAN, should consider breakthrough and novel technology to fight global plastic waste. Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) might have the closest relation to plastic waste upcycling because this compound can be used as the primary material to synthesize bioplastic, so-called plastic, to the bioplastic process. Many Pseudomonads can natively produce PHA as their extracellular product. This study qualitatively shows that the new strain Pseudomonas capeferrum TDA 1 natively produces PHA from various sole carbon sources, including plastic monomers. This finding gives significant insight for many improvements to the “plastic to bio-plastic” process on an industrial scale.