A more sustainable initiative is to produce, from renewable resources, biodegradable plastics, due to their short degradation time, for example it can be up to two years in the case of PolyLactic Acid (PLA) which physical properties are very similar to the classic plastic ones [9]. Nevertheless, the current synthesis, essentially driven by chemical reactions, is quite expensive since the process requires complex experimental conditions, for instance the absence of any trace of water, rising production costs [2]. Besides, we estimated that today the cost production of biodegradable plastics is about 12-times higher than fossil plastics cost production [10-11] and according to Yale iGEM Team (2013) one gram of pure PLA costs around US$90. Moreover it is mostly manufactured from corn, a principal human food source [12], and it is necessary near 2,7 kilograms of corn to make 1 kilogram of PLA, requiring the use of many chemicals which are environmentally unfriendly [13].

Considering all these elements, the team UChile-OpenBio wants to reach, in the long term, the implementation of a secretory biological production of PLA from a renewable resource, the brown macroalgae (kelp), which is located on the Chilean coasts. Our challenge, consists in making the biodegradable plastic production cheaper and develops an integrative way to synthesize them, using E. coli.