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Comment by tc | Hacker News Reader

The process he went through is so obvious that someone must have done this already [1], right? Right?

If this really is a new discovery, what would astound me is how easily everyone else must have given up.

[1] Not that it would take anything away from this guy, who did it at 16 with limited resources and probably without regard to existing research.

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The story about this kid keeps making the rounds, I guess it must be a slow news summer, no shark attacks. This is great for a teen and highschool project, but it's not quite as great as the article makes it out to be. And yes, it is old news: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nylon-eating_bacteria

The boy's achievement was decomposing polyethylene. I'm not entirely sure how Nylon-eating bacteria are relevant.

Indeed. To quote the more detailed original newspaper article linked from Wired: http://news.therecord.com/article/354044 " A researcher in Ireland has found Pseudomonas is capable of degrading polystyrene, but as far as Burd and his teacher Mark Menhennet know -- and they've looked -- Burd's research on polyethelene plastic bags is a first."

They must not have looked very hard: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=23...

It's doubtful a high school student and teacher know where to look. They should have asked someone in, only remotely related, research for a quick search to dig up these kinds of papers.

The above link is the top search result from a search for bacteria and polyethylene: http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=bacteria+polyethylene&...

It's worth noting that this paper refers to polyethylene glycol, which is not the stuff plastic bags are made from.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyethylene_glycol

Indeed. It is called anaerobic digestion. For more information:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaerobic_digestion

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