In a significant discovery, British chemists have found that E coli bacteria can be used to turn plastic waste into acetaminophen painkillers, opening up the possibility of a more sustainable process for producing the drugs while eliminating discarded plastic.
They were able to produce paracetamol, also known as acetaminophen, from a material produced in the laboratory from plastic bottles in under 24 hours, with low emissions, they said.
“People don’t realise that paracetamol currently comes from oil,” Prof Stephen Wallace, the lead author of the research from the University of Edinburgh told The Guardian.
“This technology shows that by merging chemistry and biology in this way for the first time, we can make paracetamol more sustainably and clean up plastic waste from the environment at the same time.”
Writing in the journal Nature Chemistry, Wallace and colleagues report how they discovered that a type of chemical reaction called a Lossen rearrangement, a process that has never been seen in nature, was biocompatible. In other words, it could be carried out in the presence of living cells without harming them.
The team made their discovery when they took polyethylene terephthalate (PET) – a type of plastic often found in food packaging and bottles – and, using sustainable chemical methods, converted it into a new material.
When they incubated this material with a harmless strain of E coli, they found it was converted into another substance known as PABA in a process that must have involved a Lossen rearrangement.
Crucially, while the Lossen rearrangement typically involves harsh laboratory conditions, it occurred spontaneously in the presence of the E coli, with the researchers discovering it was catalysed by phosphate within the cells themselves.
The team add that PABA is an essential substance needed by the bacteria for growth, in particular the synthesis of DNA, and is usually made within the cell from other substances. However, the E coli used in the experiments was genetically modified to block these pathways, meaning the bacteria had to use the PET-based material.
The researchers say the results are exciting as they suggest plastic waste can be converted into biological material.
The researchers then genetically modified the E coli further, inserting two genes – one from mushrooms and one from soil bacteria – that enabled the bacteria to convert PABA into paracetamol.
By using this form of E coli they were able to turn the PET-based starting material into paracetamol in under 24 hours, with low emissions and a yield of up to 92%.
While further work would be needed to produce paracetamol in this way at commercial levels, the results could have a practical application.
“It enables, for the first time, a pathway from plastic waste to paracetamol, which is not possible using biology alone, and it’s not possible using chemistry alone,” Wallace said.
Study details
A biocompatible Lossen rearrangement in Escherichia coli
Nick Johnson, Marcos Valenzuela-Ortega, Thomas Thorpe, Yuta Era, Annemette Kjeldsen, Keith Mulholland & Stephen Wallace.
Published in Nature Chemistry on 25 June 2025
Abstract
Nature has evolved an exquisite yet limited set of chemical reactions that underpin the function of all living organisms. By contrast, the field of synthetic organic chemistry can access reactivity not observed in nature, and integration of these abiotic reactions within living systems offers an elegant solution to the sustainable synthesis of many industrial chemicals from renewable feedstocks. Here we report a biocompatible Lossen rearrangement that is catalysed by phosphate in the bacterium Escherichia coli for the transformation of activated acyl hydroxamates to primary amine-containing metabolites in living cells. Through auxotroph rescue, we demonstrate how this new-to-nature reaction can be used to control microbial growth and chemistry by generating the essential metabolite para-aminobenzoic acid. The Lossen rearrangement substrate can also be synthesised from polyethylene terephthalate and applied to whole-cell biocatalytic reactions and fermentations generating industrial small molecules (including the drug paracetamol), paving the way for a general strategy to bioremediate and upcycle plastic waste in native and engineered biological systems.
Nature Chemistry article – A biocompatible Lossen rearrangement in Escherichia coli (Open access)
The Guardian article – Scientists use bacteria to turn plastic waste into paracetamol (Open access)
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