Biology Student Discovers Plastic-Eating Bacteria | Hacker News Reader

Biology Student Discovers Plastic-Eating Bacteria

greatlakesledger.com

96 pointscpncrunch36 comments

Isn't this old news?

* https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/16/scientis...

* https://news.stanford.edu/pr/2015/pr-worms-digest-plastics-0...

Even more:

Daniel Burd (Canada) - Bacteria that break down polyethylene - https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2008/07/01/waterloo_student...

Miranda Wang & Jeanny Yao (Canada) - Bacteria that eat phthalates - https://www.sciencealert.com/students-are-developing-a-bacte...

Tseng I-Ching (Taiwan) - Bacteria that degrade Styrofoam - https://www.mnn.com/green-tech/research-innovations/blogs/hi...

Morgan Vague (Oregon, US) - polyethylene terephthalate [See OP]

And there exists even more research on this, out of Japan.

Can we please just take all those bacteria and together throw them into a bioreactor along with some well mixed, diverse plastic trash, for that sweet, sweet horizontal gene transfer?

Bonus if we can also get some fungi and/or lichen and/or bryophytes in there/out of that.

Another evergreens:

- battery breakthrough

- solar cells efficiency breakthrough

- water electrolysis breakthrough

Don't forget the occasional breakthroughs that give us hope in nuclear fusion power :)

- new antibacterial breakthrough

- superconductor breakthrough

- graphene manufacturing breakthrough

- quantum computing breakthrough

- cancer treatment breakthrough

This sounds like the Carboniferous period when fungus couldn’t eat lignin and trees were piling up.

Interesting, I learnt something, thank you for mentioning this! This is what Wikipedia has to say about it [1]:

The large coal deposits of the Carboniferous may owe their existence primarily to two factors. The first of these is the appearance of wood tissue and bark-bearing trees. The evolution of the wood fiber lignin and the bark-sealing, waxy substance suberin variously opposed decay organisms so effectively that dead materials accumulated long enough to fossilise on a large scale. The second factor was the lower sea levels that occurred during the Carboniferous as compared to the preceding Devonian period. This promoted the development of extensive lowland swamps and forests in North America and Europe. Based on a genetic analysis of mushroom fungi, it was proposed that large quantities of wood were buried during this period because animals and decomposing bacteria had not yet evolved enzymes that could effectively digest the resistant phenolic lignin polymers and waxy suberin polymers. They suggest that fungi that could break those substances down effectively only became dominant towards the end of the period, making subsequent coal formation much rarer.

So indeed, superficially, a few parallels can be drawn to the anthropocene "plastic age". Some life form (trees) essentially "trashed" the planet with polymers that were not biodegradable. It took 60 million years until evolution "caught up" and equipped bacteria and fungi with the enzymes that could degrade those polymers. Nowadays dead trees in a forest rot within a few years.

It seems reasonable to think that the same will eventually happen to our plastic; i.e., if we were to cover the planet in plastic waste, then eventually, after a few million years (or far sooner, if there are only few mutations required for the polymer degrading enzymes to be efficient with plastics), some bioform will be able to feed on that.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Carboniferous&old...

It always makes me wonder what a landfill would look like in a million years.

Also, why is plastic being burned? Separate it cleanly and just store it in packages in a landfill. Either eventually a method of recycling will be found so the landfill can be harvested again for raw materials, or a bacteria will be found for that specific plastic that can be released on there.

As it stands, there's trash separation (in developed countries) and then whatever can't be recycled either goes to a landfill or burned.

It's likely that nearly free energy is a requirement for mining a landfill so the plastic won't be worth much of anything by then anyway (just make any hydrocarbons you need from the air and water).

Really you'd be cleaning up the landfill more than mining it, but that's okay.

A lot of recycling decisions come down to similar considerations, doing them is a net drain on resources and costs money, so it doesn't make any sense.

I may be naive but every time I hear about these efforts I wonder if the microbes might start degrading plastic things we don't want recycled just yet.

We manage with wood, we'll manage with plastic.

Everything needs water, so it'll effectively always be about water management.

Also, if necessary we can add poison to the plastic just for those things that really need it (underground pipes mainly I suspect).

What the world really needs is a strong, light, cheap material that lasts, after water contact, at full strength, about 3 months, and degrades in a couple of years.

I've always wondered if there way a cheap way to engineer cellulose or lignin into a material like this. But it's gotta be really cheap.

Isn't it amazing that we can make a material that is simply too good?

(I have some plastic toys from the 1960's that are too fragile to touch. My 1972 Dodge has some synthetic foam insulation under the dash that turns to powder when touched. Maybe we already have the needed technology, it is just forgotten.)

Are the long-chain molecules "disassembled", or did they just turn into billions of plastic nano-particles? Out of sight, out of mind? Something falling into tiny pieces isn't necessarily a good thing. For plastics, we want the actual molecules to degrade to something that can enter the usual organic circles of life (the biochemical pathways in various organisms).

^ this, I saw a video recently about it. Plastic does break down, but it turns into microplastics that find their way into and up through the food chain.

Might have been this one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RS7IzU2VJIQ&t=0s

> "Isn't it amazing that we can make a material that is simply too good?"

Um. Is it? Whatever happened to: Just because you can doesn't mean you should.

Also, good is subjective. What would be more accurate is: make a material that currently does not breakdown naturally. We know this. But we keep making it instead of reusing what we already have.

Amazing? Or amazingly short-sighted?

Wax paper?

This is a great start: One biology student looking in limited places found bacteria with the right enzyme. She probably read the Japanese research, and that's always the right start for a scientist: read the literature.

What would really be nice is this being embedded in the plastics themselves but encapsulated for a few years. Self destructing plastic?

Now that's what I call planned obscolesence.

So you have a "best before" date on your plastic bags?

While the story is legit and has been covered other places, this site looks sketchy and makes me wonder if it's a splog. This feeling is supported by the lack of available information about the author. The only results that come up for the author appear to be related to the URL, and when I search for his name in relation to the other websites he's said to have written for, nothing comes up.

I'm extremely naive and ill-informed about biology and evolution, but I'm going to throw this question out there: isn't it an evolutionary advantage to evolve mechanisms to digest one of the most abundant materials - plastic - on the planet? Surely, some organism can find a way to extract some nutritional value from plastics?

Depends on what would they produce as results of their metabolism? If they are going to poison oceans/lands with their products, it might cause unwanted kind of evolution.

> one of the most abundant materials

There's too much of it, and it's definitely harming the planet, but is it really that abundant in absolute terms?

It's abundant in the sense that there is no competition for it. I'd reckon it would be an evolutionary advantage to have complete monopoly over a resource.

Yes, but it takes a while. Plastics are somewhat recent on the evolutionary timescale.

With a bacteria that convert PET into something else, there is a toxic byproduct: BPA. I suggest that the student continues the research for BPA-eating bacteria.

I bet this will lead to huge imbalance in the world of micro-organisms, the effects of which, we do not understand.

For some definitions of "huge". Despite all the press about it, there isn't really all that much plastic out there.

For comparison there's at least 1,000 times as much biomass grown per year as there is plastic produced per year.

Not exactly reassuring. That's "huge" by pretty much any definition!

Yah, on further consideration that is pretty huge.

My numbers are off however, my figure for biomass production is only the weight of the carbon. I can't seem to find numbers for total production.

Especially since the majority of the weight of a plant is in the water - which has no carbon.

Well it should be self-correcting in itself if there is no rogue plastic lying around to be consumed they will die off.

Although there may be an issue with diversity and horizontal gene transfer - I am uncertain what impact that will actually have - especially given how fast bacteria adapt in the first place in proper conditions.

so there will be no sudden explosion in the organisms that eat this bacteria?

Also no chance that it will evolve sideways to decide it likes to eat other things?

I hope they keep it contained. After other notorious attempts to do things like this (aka cane-toads in Queensland Australia etc) I dont like to think of what happens with something nearly invisible as bacteria and as wide spread as plastic...

Doubt it. Bacteria population is managed by a number of factors, most important ones are food, warmth and predators. Additionally the student is unlikely to follow the strictest ABC-Guidelines so it's probably some samples already leaked if they had any.

If the bacteria only eats plastics then it has an uncontested food supply that nothing else will touch. Other bacteria are unlikely to suffer.

Warmth isn't actively being competed over since it can be obtained fairly easily by non-cooperative means instead.

Predators already exist. Virophages that can kill this bacteria are likely to evolve quickly considering they cover every surface on this planet. If it gets out of control, simply introduce the correct phage. They happily terminate 40% of all marine life every day so I think some plastic bacteria won't be trouble.

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