CHBE 565-International Paper Co Seminar-Prof. Mark Blenner, University of Delaware (host: Chris Rao) "(How) Does Biology Degrade Polyethylene? Adventures in Biological Degradation and Upcycling of Polyolefins"
- Event Type
- Seminar/Symposium
- Sponsor
- Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering and International Paper Company
- Location
- 116 Roger Adams Lab
- Date
- Dec 4, 2025 2:00 pm
- Contact
- Christy Bowser
- cbowser@illinois.edu
- Phone
- 217-244-9214
- Views
- 19
- Originating Calendar
- Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering - Seminars and Events
Abstract: Plastic waste has become one of society’s most pressing existential crises. Over 165 million tons of polyolefins, for example, are produced each year. While great progress has been made towards establishing efficient deconstruction of hydrolysable plastics like polyethylene terephthalate, non-hydrolysable polyolefins plastics, such as polyethylene (PE), are much more challenging to deconstruct biologically. In order to understand what solutions biology might offer, we studied one of nature’s more effective polyolefin deconstructors – the yellow mealworm.
Initially, we sought to replicate and confirm observations in the field; however, inconsistencies in materials and methods throughout the field have complicated matters. While have demonstrated some of the most impressive results in the field are misinterpretations, we have confirmed that mealworms do deconstruct polyethylene in a gut microbiome dependent manner. We next identified a novel class of PE-oxidases and elucidated unique structural features necessary for this rather unusual activity. Using this knowledge, we engineered improved oxidation activity. The next steps in the deconstruction pathway are under active investigation. We have further identified a fungus that produces microplastic flocculating proteins, and preliminary evidence suggests it may coordinate with bacterial species from the gut to enhance plastic degradation.
Bio: Dr. Blenner is the Thomas & Kipp Gutshall Career Development Associate Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Delaware. Prior to that, he was the McQueen Quattlebaum Associate Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Clemson University. He received his PhD in Chemical Engineering from Columbia University in 2009 and completed three years of postdoctoral training as an American Heart Association Postdoctoral Fellow and an NIH NRSA Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard Medical School and Children’s Hospital Boston. He has won numerous awards including the 2025 Langer Prize for Innovation and Entrepreneurial Excellence, 2022 AIChE Food, Pharmaceutical, and Bioengineering Division Early Career Award, the 2021 ACS BIOT Young Investigator Award, and the 2019 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). He is on the Board of the Society of Industrial Microbiology & Biotechnology and ACS Biochemical Technology. His research is broadly focused on engineering biomolecular and cellular systems to produce fuels, chemicals, enzymes, biopharmaceuticals and biosensors. Some of the common threads across his lab’s work are around using microbes for enabling a circular economy and addressing biomanufacturing-related problems arising from cell line design in both microbes and animal cells.