Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The Guardian reports, surprise, that a species of bacteria has been discovered which can eat plastic.
Could a new plastic-eating bacteria help combat this pollution scourge?
Scientists have discovered a species of bacteria capable of breaking down commonly used PET plastic but remain unsure of its potential applications.
Nature has begun to fight back against the vast piles of filth dumped into its soils, rivers and oceans by evolving a plastic-eating bacteria – the first known to science.
In a report published in the journal Science, a team of Japanese researchers described a species of bacteria that can break the molecular bonds of one of the world’s most-used plastics – polyethylene terephthalate, also known as PET or polyester.
The Japanese research team sifted through hundreds of samples of PET pollution before finding a colony of organisms using the plastic as a food source.
Further tests found the bacteria almost completely degraded low-quality plastic within six weeks. This was voracious when compared to other biological agents; including a related bacteria, leaf compost and a fungus enzyme recently found to have an appetite for PET.
The abstract of the study;
A bacterium that degrades and assimilates poly(ethylene terephthalate)
Poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) is used extensively worldwide in plastic products, and its accumulation in the environment has become a global concern. Because the ability to enzymatically degrade PET has been thought to be limited to a few fungal species, biodegradation is not yet a viable remediation or recycling strategy. By screening natural microbial communities exposed to PET in the environment, we isolated a novel bacterium, Ideonella sakaiensis 201-F6, that is able to use PET as its major energy and carbon source. When grown on PET, this strain produces two enzymes capable of hydrolyzing PET and the reaction intermediate, mono(2-hydroxyethyl) terephthalic acid. Both enzymes are required to enzymatically convert PET efficiently into its two environmentally benign monomers, terephthalic acid and ethylene glycol.
Read more: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/351/6278/1196
What amazes me is that anyone is surprised by this discovery. Anyone who has ever owned a large boat knows about the constant and often losing battle to control fungus and bacteria growing in the diesel tanks, and the hideously toxic biocides you have to keep adding to the fuel, to stop all the organic muck from blocking the fuel filter. Life finds a way.
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Reminds me of a BBC series in the late 60’s called “Doom Watch”. In one episode a bacteria designed to eat plastic escapes and starts eating electric wire insulation with disastrous consequences.
Plastic is food and nature always finds a way to eat food. Nature has probably found a way to go airborne above the treetops to photosynthesize CO2 but there hasn’t been a government grant to find it yet.
From 2014:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-04/an-scientists-say-fish-may-be-eating-ocean-plastic-waste/5571946
An international team of experts has found evidence there is 100 times less plastic on ocean surfaces than expected. Professor Carlos Duarte, an oceanographer from the University of Western Australia, was part of the study that towed a mesh net through the world’s oceans….
The scientists found about 40,000 tons of plastic waste floating in the ocean. The figure is far less than the 1 million tons that had been predicted based on data going back to 1970.
Professor Duarte says among the concerns with fish eating the waste is the possibility that the plastic could eventually end up in the human food chain….Professor Duarte says there is also the chance the plastic is breaking down into pieces too small to detect or that microbes are degrading the plastic.
The UV degrades the plastic, allowing wave action to break it up. The small pieces allow
petroleum loving bacteria to attack it from all directions. The oceans are the best habitat
for the petroleum loving bacteria because up welling hydrocarbons have been feeding them
for billions of years, allowing natural selection to find the best bacteria for each variety
of hydrocarbon.
Teflon is a petroleum derived plastic. The hydrocarbon loving bacteria in soil is mostly
designed by natural selection to eat only the components of natural gas because that
is the “food” which is most available. Plastics in the ground and in the air are not in the
environment which supports the required culture which could consume them.
Teflon is a fluorocarbon and contains only C-F bonds, no C-H bonds so it’s unlikely any bacteria will metabolize it.
Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE, aka Teflon®) also contains carbon-carbon bonds, and is susceptible to degradation by UV light.
Er, not true. As with most man-made polymers, the backbone of PTFE consists of carbon-carbon single bonds in a chain. Fluorine atoms fill all of the other carbon bonding sites.
This reminds me of the phenomenon of polystyrene biodegradation, discovered in the 1990’s, that made the most nihilistic enviros stop whining that the discarded polystyrene beverage cups and food packaging would last ‘forever’.
Yet another example of how the negative feedbacks of Nature are charged and ready to go against any perturbation of the system. No one need be surprised at this latest one. Fungus and bacteria are very powerful agents of correction and are very hungry.
The same and similar systems are in place and ready to go against any changes that increased CO2 may attempt in the atmosphere.
This was all foreseen by the science fiction of the 1970’s. Mutant 59. The Plastic Eaters. Didn’t get as much traction as The Andromeda Strain mentioned above.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2368220.Mutant_59
Excellent point about fungus in fuel tanks, a serious corrosion problem for aircraft in hot humid climates.
Bad news for future archaeologists.
Nobody ever seems to ask how does all this plastic end up in the middle of the ocean anyway?
We ship a lot of our garbage to China in fact it’s our number one export.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304444604577337702024537204
My guess is they get half way across and dump the garbage in the middle of the ocean. Everything else degrades except the plastic.