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Metabolic engineering

New-to-nature biocompatible chemistry for plastic waste upcycling

Synthetic and biological chemistry are traditionally seen as separate fields. Now, a biocompatible chemical reaction enables an engineered microbe to convert plastic waste into valuable compounds under mild, cell-friendly conditions.

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Fig. 1: Schematic of biocompatible Lossen rearrangement for plastic waste upcycling.

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Correspondence to Matthew Wook Chang.

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Soon, W.L., Chong, H.Q., Foo, J.L. et al. New-to-nature biocompatible chemistry for plastic waste upcycling. Nat. Chem. 17, 982–983 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-025-01863-3

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