Bacteria Turn Trash Plastic into Parkinson’s Medication

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh engineered E. coli to break down post-consumer PET plastic into L-DOPA, the frontline drug for Parkinson’s disease, marking the first demonstration of a biology-based route from plastic waste to a pharmaceutical and signaling a potentially greener, scalable way to produce medicines. The work, part of the Carbon-Loop Sustainable Biomanufacturing Hub with £14 million in EPSRC funding, aims to optimize industrial-scale production and reduce reliance on fossil-fuel–based pharmaceutical processes.