NICE-PET

Project mission

It aims at using the larvae of black soldier fly (BSF), Hermetia illucens, one of the most promising systems used in bioconversion technologies for waste processing and valorisation, as a bioreactor to efficiently reduce PET waste. In particular, modified BSF larvae will be grown on PET-containing substrates. Final larval biomass could be exploited as a raw material to produce biobased products as bioplastics and biofuels.

To achieve this aim, four specific research objectives have been conceived:

• in vitro evolution of microbial PET-degrading enzymes (PETases)

• generation of BSF larvae that express PETases at gut level through the Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR/Cas9) genome editing system

• in-depth characterization of BSF gut microbiota contribution to PET biodegradation processes

• optimization of BSF-mediated PET biotransformation.