Copolymerization of Bacterial Cell Wall Materials to Enhance Stability of Polyhydroxyalkanoate

This brief investigation reports copolymerizing polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) with a durable bacterial cell wall component, peptidoglycan (PTG). PHAs are biodegradable polymers produced by some bacteria, but the environmental advantage is offset by the time, energy, and solvent use to separation PHAs from cell residues, including PTG. Here, a PHA was copolymerized with PTG (10, 25 wt%). Thermal stability and moisture uptake of the resulting polyesteramide showed copolymers absorbed up to 60% more moisture than the PHA but at 25 wt% peptidoglycan the onset of decomposition increased by nearly 125 °C. Less PTG in PHA gave lesser increases. The results suggest that useful materials might be produced with less rigorous purification strategies for bacterially produced PHAs. Polyhydroxybutanoate can be copolymerized with a bacterial cell wall component to give a polyesteramide with more thermal stability than the starting polymers. The result suggests alternative, less rigorous work‐ups of bacterially generated polyesters might be designed to retain some cell wall components to give useful copolymer products.