Production of biodegradable polymers is currently one of the major direction for research and application within biotechnology. The need for developing new technologies of polymer generation has emerged as an answer to the growing share of disposed materials made of plastics in municipal waste (up to 21%), limited possibilities for their recycling, as well as the resistance to biodegradation and the high environmental stability of waste containing synthetic polymer-based materials.

Polyhydroxyalkanoates are linear polyesters, synthesized and accumulated by microorganisms as a source of carbon, energy and reducing equivalents. The intensive growth of biodiesel production , especially in the Europenian Union, over the next few years might couse overproductionof glycerol as a by-product of transestrification. Therefore new technologies of glycerol utilization must be developed and one of the potential directions is to use glycerol as a feedstock for polyhydroxyalkanoates production.

I conduct a research related with polyhydroxyalkanoates synthesis (poly-3-propionic acid with its coopolimer poly-3-valeric acid) stored in Bacillus megaterium cells. Actually I work on obtaining genetic modified cells of Bacillus megaterium, in which I introduce genes construct.

To characterize the specific function of genes products prpE: propionyl-CoA dehydrogenase from Seratia enterica serovar Typhimurium LT2,
puuC: gamma-gluamyl-gamma-aminobutyraldehyd dehydrogenase from Escherichia coli MG1655, dhaBCE: glycerin dehydratase from Escherichia blattae ATCC 33429,
genes were cloned and overexpressed in Bacillus megaterium under the xylose inducible promoter using the pMM1522 vector from Escherichia coli to examine their effects on production PHP and PHV.