Owen Turner

Sedgwick Studentship 2024-2027

Owen is a PhD student affiliated with Anglia Ruskin University and the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology at the University of Cambridge. Before beginning his doctoral studies, he worked as a biopharmaceutical fermentation scientist and food microbiologist and holds an MSc in Food Technology from Wageningen University.

His PhD project focuses on advancing biotechnological approaches to plastic recycling by using enzymes to break down plastics into their constituent monomers, enabling the materials to be reused as feedstock and supporting a circular economy. The research begins with identifying novel enzymes capable of degrading PET plastic, with an emphasis on samples collected from cold environments—an underexplored area that may yield enzymes with desirable properties. The project then moves to recombinant production and kinetic analysis of both known and newly discovered enzymes, employing the Inverse Michaelis-Menten kinetics framework to evaluate their ability to degrade highly crystalline PET, a significant technical challenge in the field. Finally, the study investigates displaying these enzymes, along with others, as synergistic pairs on bacterial spores to potentially enhance their efficiency and sustainability.

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