Efficient thermophilic polyethylene terephthalate hydrolase enhanced by cross correlation-based accumulated mutagenesis strategy

•Achieved LCC-YGA with 2.07-fold hydrolytic activity of LCC-ICCG.•Mitigated epistatic effect by cross-correlation-based combinatorial mutations.•Increased flexibility of binding pocket through remote interactions.•Enhanced activity from synergistic effect between long-range and local dynamics. Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) has caused significant pollution issues. Compared to chemical degradation with high energy consumption and cost, enzymatic degradation offers a sustainable solution for PET waste recycling. However, the hydrolytic activity of current PET hydrolases still requires improvement. In this study, a cross-correlation-based accumulated mutagenesis (CAM) strategy was developed to enhance the hydrolysis activity. By mitigating epistatic effect and combinational mutations, we achieved a highly active variant LCC-YGA (H183Y/L124G/S29A) with 2.1-fold hydrolytic activity on amorphous PET films of LCC-ICCG. Conformational analysis elucidated how the introduction of distal mutations enhanced activity. The dynamic correlation among different regions facilitated a synergistic effect, enhancing binding pocket flexibility through remote interactions. Totally, this work offers novel insights and methods for PET hydrolases engineering and provides an efficient enzyme for PET degradation and recycling.