Publications by authors named "Milica Djapovic"

The discovery and engineering of novel biocatalysts capable of depolymerizing polyethylene terephthalate (PET) have gained significant attention since the need for green technologies to combat plastic pollution has become increasingly urgent. This study focuses on the development of novel substrates that can indicate enzymes with PET hydrolytic activity, streamlining the process of enzyme evaluation and selection. Four novel substrates, mimicking the structure of PET, were chemically synthesized and labeled with fluorogenic or chromogenic moieties, enabling the direct analysis of candidate enzymes without complex preparatory or analysis steps.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Manufactured nanoplastic particles (NPs) are indispensable for in vitro and in vivo testing and a health risk assessment of this emerging environmental contaminant is needed. The high surface area and inherent hydrophobicity of plastic materials makes the production of NPs devoid of any contaminants very challenging. In this study, we produced nanoprecipitated polyethylene terephthalate (PET) NPs (300 nm hydrodynamic diameter) with an overall yield of 0.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is widely used material and as such became highly enriched in nature. It is generally considered inert and safe plastic, but due to the recent increased efforts to break-down PET using biotechnological approaches, we realized the scarcity of information about structural analysis of possible degradation products and their ecotoxicological assessment. Therefore, in this study, 11 compounds belonging to the group of PET precursors and possible degradation products have been comprehensively characterized.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A PHP Error was encountered

Severity: Warning

Message: fopen(/var/lib/php/sessions/ci_sessionkrucvngjjgo7b3utirbvtie9eku6mkmt): Failed to open stream: No space left on device

Filename: drivers/Session_files_driver.php

Line Number: 177

Backtrace:

File: /var/www/html/index.php
Line: 316
Function: require_once

A PHP Error was encountered

Severity: Warning

Message: session_start(): Failed to read session data: user (path: /var/lib/php/sessions)

Filename: Session/Session.php

Line Number: 137

Backtrace:

File: /var/www/html/index.php
Line: 316
Function: require_once