Jonathan Diab

Plastics are employed across almost every sector of human activity. This trend is unlikely to change as humanity expands off our planet, with these materials being incorporated into everything from spacesuits to electronics. However, modern manufacturing methods rely either on petroleum, which is unfeasible once we leave Earth, or on microbial systems, which themselves require expensive feedstocks.

I'm engineering aquatic monocots from the Lemnoideae family, commonly known as duckweeds, as a novel biomanufacturing chassis to harness the efficiency advantages of photosynthesis. Specifically, I'm modifying the plants to produce a class of biodegradable bioplastics called polyhydroxyalkanoates, which retain the functional properties of traditional petroleum-based materials.

I'm also exploring the performance and localisation of bacterial-origin plastic degrading enzymes in a plant system, using duckweed as the model. I’ll be looking at all of this with a consideration for technoeconomic constraints on market success, balanced with the social and environmental costs of production.