Enzyme That Eats Plastic Bottles

An account states that scientists have 'created' a mutant enzyme that can break down plastic bottles, within hours, to generate the building blocks for making new, high-quality bottles (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/08/scientists-create-mutant-enzyme-that-recycles-plastic-bottles-in-hours). This material offers the prospect of greatly reducing the amount of plastic waste, as previous methods only allowed the recycled material to be used for making material such as cloth. Reading the detail of the account, however, suggests that what the scientists have done is to identify a (possibly mutant) bacterium with an enzyme in compost and have started work on isolating, purifying and concentrating this biological catalyst. This is not quite the same as 'creating' the enzyme (although they might like to claim this for patenting reasons)!