Bugs Across Globe Are Evolving To Eat Plastic, Study Finds (theguardian.com) 88
Microbes in oceans and soils across the globe are evolving to eat plastic, according to a study. The research scanned more than 200m genes found in DNA samples taken from the environment and found 30,000 different enzymes that could degrade 10 different types of plastic. From a report: The study is the first large-scale global assessment of the plastic-degrading potential of bacteria and found that one in four of the organisms analysed carried a suitable enzyme. The researchers found that the number and type of enzymes they discovered matched the amount and type of plastic pollution in different locations. The results "provide evidence of a measurable effect of plastic pollution on the global microbial ecology," the scientists said.
Millions of tonnes of plastic are dumped in the environment every year, and the pollution now pervades the planet, from the summit of Mount Everest to the deepest oceans. Reducing the amount of plastic used is vital, as is the proper collection and treatment of waste. But many plastics are currently hard to degrade and recycle. Using enzymes to rapidly break down plastics into their building blocks would enable new products to be made from old ones, cutting the need for virgin plastic production. The new research provides many new enzymes to be investigated and adapted for industrial use.
Millions of tonnes of plastic are dumped in the environment every year, and the pollution now pervades the planet, from the summit of Mount Everest to the deepest oceans. Reducing the amount of plastic used is vital, as is the proper collection and treatment of waste. But many plastics are currently hard to degrade and recycle. Using enzymes to rapidly break down plastics into their building blocks would enable new products to be made from old ones, cutting the need for virgin plastic production. The new research provides many new enzymes to be investigated and adapted for industrial use.
Obligatory (Score:4, Insightful)
"Life, uh, finds a way." - that dinosaur movie guy
Re: Obligatory (Score:2)
Yeah eventually birds will be laying plastic shelled eggs. Or incorporating it into their body structures, the same way crows use coat hangars to build their nests or diatoms making glass cell walls. Then it will be anti-environmental to not dump plastic into the ocean.
Paper or plastic? Now obsolete (Score:2)
So much for all the plastic pollution problems! But say hello to andromeda strain problems.
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coat hangars
Sweatshops, you insensitive clod.
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Now *that* is bad news for the easter decoration industry . . .
But getting the threads right will probably take even longer . . .
Ringworld is the real obligatory (Score:3)
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That quote is actually from Dr. Ian Malcolm :)
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Nature Always Finds A Way
Mod, parent up.
Nature was given a helping hand (Score:3)
There is bioengineering involved.
Develop new bugs that could eat plastic. And maybe later ones that can destroy concrete. What could possibly go wrong.
But if it stops them developing new viruses I am all for it.
Re:Obligatory (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Obligatory (Score:1)
Here come the Replicators...
Nature for the win? (Score:5, Insightful)
So - what we're hearing is, dump our garbage however we want because nature will clean up after us! Now, we just need to find a bug, or bacteria, or something that can eat air pollution, and all of our problems will be solved.
Sarcasm above - obviously.
Though, pretty cool anyway! Nature always finds a way.
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Yeah, but I bet that way involves the bugs shitting PCBs or eating plastics that we need for industrial needs.
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Shitting PCBs, could be. Eating industrial plastics, probably only when wet. So then we'll come up with some kind of fancy coatings that retard them, and the arms race will continue.
Ultimately metal is going to be the answer, and eventually titanium might get cheap enough to replace most uses of plastics... Although we'll still have to figure out how to insulate wiring without microbes eating the insulation.
Re:Nature for the win? (Score:4, Informative)
Sure. It's happened a number of times before. There were some smartass microbes that figured out how to break down water using sunlight and started spewing poisonous oxygen into the atmosphere. It caused a mass extinction but things eventually stabilized when other microbes figured out how to eat the oxygen.
Even more apropos, a bunch of organisms started making a polymer (much like plastic) to strengthen their cell walls. It made them armoured badasses, but when they died their bodies just hung around and piled up. It was ages until something figured out how to eat them. So long that the piles form actual geological layers.
Re:Nature for the win? (Score:4, Interesting)
And then, untold millenia later, some life-form as yet undreamed of will discover how dig it up and burn it for energy, setting themselves on the path to their own extinction a mere couple of hundred years later. Cycle of life, baybi!!
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Now, we just need to find a bug, or bacteria, or something that can eat air pollution, and all of our problems will be solved.
With respect to CO, they are called trees :-)
Re: Nature for the win? (Score:2)
Re: Nature for the win? (Score:2)
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So - what we're hearing is, dump our garbage however we want because nature will clean up after us! Now, we just need to find a bug, or bacteria, or something that can eat air pollution, and all of our problems will be solved.
Sarcasm above - obviously.
Though, pretty cool anyway! Nature always finds a way.
It would actually be cool if we coerce bacteria and fungi to digest plastics and to have them excrete useful materials (or at least inert/less toxic materials that can then be further broken down by natural processes.)
The holy grail would be to have naturally-evolved or GM critters (like bacteria, tardigrade or fungi) sequesting heavy metals as inert poop, or chew plastics and then poop fuel or safe fertilizer, feedstock for animals or grow medium for mushrooms and plants.
Next: infection of plastic by vacteria and mold (Score:5, Interesting)
Not that long (Score:1)
Soon (within 300 years) - electric shortage everywhere
You have only about a year or two to wait on that one, no need to wait for some mythical plastic eating mold to wreck components. California is already hit.
Re: Not that long (Score:3)
How does the mold find phosphorous and other elements it needs in plastic? It also needs moisture. I mean, wood has existed in abundant supply for billions of years and mold still takes years to metabolize a tree even if it rains a lot. And thatâ(TM)s wood, which comes with all the elements needed for life, unlike plastic. Heck there is a massive fallen over tree I saw on a hike the other day that someone told me has supposedly been there for centuries â" decades definitely. It had some mushrooms
But not new viruses (Score:2)
At least while they are engineering plastic eating bugs they are not engineering new viruses. One was enough!
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Ringworld has the trope of an amazing artifact left behind by an advanced civilization, of which there were no survivors.
Turns out the civilization ran on room temperature superconductors, which was great till something started feeding on it.
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It's been a while since I read Ringworld. I think the Ringworld is supposed to have been built by Pak Protectors. I wouldn't call them a civilization, from what I remember each Protector was more of a single individual capable of nearly anything either alone or in small alliances at most.
Somehow a few decided that a structure made of mythical materials in solar-system-sized portions was the way to go. Then the equally advanced but highly-cooperative Puppeteers found the Ringworld and were scared of it and a
Re: Next: infection of plastic by vacteria and mol (Score:2)
Wait, what? That doesnâ(TM)t seem possible, lack of moisture aside, for the mold to replicate it needs elements that are not found in plastic, such as .. uh, phosphorous.. how you gonna make DNA without phosphorous? And yes the mold needs to replicate, it canâ(TM)t sit there metabolizing plastic, it would take forever not to mention drown in its own shit literally.
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It's not a huge problem. We already deal with things like rust and plastic degradation. We already have alternatives like latex.
Re:Next: infection of plastic by vacteria and mold (Score:5, Insightful)
Being high in energy makes them an energy source, which makes them attractive to biology. You either have to get your energy from sunlight (photosynthesis), or from consuming chemicals (usually sugars). So anything which can consume plastic for energy ends up with a competitive advantage. It's just difficult because the molecules in plastic are extremely long chains. Same problem which affects wood (cellulose is essentially really long chains of sugar molecules). Only a few bacteria have evolved to be able to break cellulose apart, and animals which can digest plants have these bacteria in their gut.
Likewise, chemical compounds which are low in Gibbs free energy end up being resistant to biology. Bacteria and animals have little use for them, since they're essentially a waste product. They can only be used as a raw material if you have an alternate energy source (like plants can use sunlight to break apart CO2). So they end up sticking around in the environment for a really long time. Most POPs (persistent organic pollutants) fall into this category.
Eventually someone is gonna invent plastic-like polymers which are low in Gibbs free energy, which will "solve" the problem of long-lived artificial materials again. But likewise it will create a sequel to the problem of non-degradable plastic garbage. Except there will be much less incentive for anything to evolve to break down these substances (they'd need an external energy source). If/when that happens, we need to be sure not to repeat the same mistake we made with plastics, which got used for all sorts of stupid stuff (why the hell would you use something which will last in the environment for thousands of years for single-use package wrapping, forks, and straws?). I've had to lug a battery-powered shop vac to the local park three times to vacuum up plastic confetti from the grass. Some company seems to be using this stuff in pinatas and party poppers, instead of paper (which is biodegradable).
Re:Is it vital though? (Score:4, Informative)
Because it's poisoning just about the entire ecosystem, except for the adapting bacteria. Including humans, many of the chemicals in plastics are bioactive in humans and are close enough to trigger various changes like the age of sexual maturity, body fat, ability to reproduce, cancer, etc. Generally you should avoid plastics as much as possible, drink/eat/touch with a minimal amount of plastic. Buy food in containers with minimum plastic/food ratio, drink out of glass/metal when possible, don't heat up microwaveable food in plastic, etc.
So what? (Score:2)
Including humans, many of the chemicals in plastics are bioactive in humans
If you were a real environmentalist you wouldn't care about what happened to humans.
I say, support the bugs!
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So if organisms are evolving to eat plastic, why is reduction vital? Do you hate evolution that much you want to cut off this helpful development?
"Helpful" turns out to have sign as well as magnitude. How helpful is an evolutionary development that works toward the random, nonselective destruction of a widely used material? Today the organisms are eating plastic pollution; tomorrow they're eating the insulation from your car's wiring harnesses.
Re:Is it vital though? (Score:4, Insightful)
Today the organisms are eating plastic pollution; tomorrow they're eating the insulation from your car's wiring harnesses.
Think about what would happen if there was a substance so destructive that it could turn steel into iron oxide powder. Society would literally crumble.
Lets do more (Score:1)
Termintes (Score:4, Insightful)
We use a lot plastic on things we don't want to rot. I wonder if some of these critters will evolve to become pests and turn problematic of when it comes to materials we come to think are rather impervious like PVC.
I know decomposition of plastic waste is real concern but rather than a cause for optimism this could turn into a real worry.
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You do know we had buildings and plumbing before plastics, right? "It might become a problem in the future" is a small price to pay for all our plastic garbage being cleaned up.
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Hmm, I'm not too keen on the reintroduction of lead pipes.
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Thats why there is black iron, galvanized steel, copper, brass, stainless ($$) etc etc etc along with a myriad of joining options.
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You're not wrong... but I was thinking we would reintroduce lead pipes. ;)
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I had the same worry.
"Dust bunnies" in servers was a bad thing. But actual bugs eating the motherboard would be a disaster.
And this is not new. Environmental concerns had replaced cabling in vehicles with bio-degradable ones. Result: rodents will chew on them, causing failures, or worse. The warranty does not cover the damage, even though it is the manufacturer who chose to use "food" as insulation material, and there is now a new industry selling "rodent repellents" for cars: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=car [amazon.com]
I've heard this one before (Score:2)
From [url="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2368220.Mutant_59"]this 1970's book.[/url]
I've heard this one before (fixed link) (Score:2)
From this 1970's book. [goodreads.com]
Editors Please dont use "bug", sounds like insects (Score:4, Informative)
Editors, please. This is a site for nerds... don't water down details so much please. Bug is used to describe insects 99% of the time, we don't need it used for microbes here.
On topic, this is weird and... maybe a good thing. We can hope.
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Well, it's not just microbes: https://www.discovermagazine.c... [discovermagazine.com]
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Bug is used to describe insects 99% of the time, we don't need it used for microbes here.
Uh, on a tech site, I'd wager it's closed to 99.9% used to refer to defects in software and hardware.
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Nope. Among the ones who regularly use "bugs" to refer to microbes are the biochemists and microbiologists. (I work in a university department filled with them.)
Never fear, you're being suitably geeky using bugs.
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Sure, jargon in-field talks about superbugs etc.
GP is talking about context-free disambiguation for a general nerd audience.
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This is a site for nerds. Geeks should go back to their basements and play some video games, or play with their microbe "collection." Also known as a neckbeard.
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20 years until "SuperBug Destroys Plastic"? (Score:2)
Science fiction for the win (Score:2)
I forget which sci-fi short story writer, Bradbury perhaps, wrote about story in the 1970s about termites that evolved to eat metal.
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Ray Bradbury, as well as many other science fiction authors, wrote of many possible future developments. Someone is going to get something right at some time.
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Of COURSE they are (Score:4, Insightful)
The evolutionary change is pretty rapid, but ultimately anything that CAN be consumed as a source of energy, will be.
It took 60 million years for bacteria to figure out lignin and degrade wood, but they eventually did.
GOOD! (Score:1)
People have abused plastics long enough! Nature evolving to consume the stuff we discard is the best outcome we could have hoped for. In fact, we should identify and optimize their consumption of plastics in a way that doesn't release CO2.
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Nature evolving to consume the stuff we discard is the best outcome we could have hoped for.
I agree.
People have abused plastics long enough!
In what way have we been abusing it? How would you replace that abuse?
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In what way have we been abusing it? How would you replace that abuse?
I consider single-use plastics (e.g. plastic wrapped packaging and plastic bottles (especially bottled water)) to be abuse because of how little they are used and how quickly they are discarded. This behavior has resulted in a HUGE build up of plastics. Replacing plastic bottles with aluminum cans is much better for the environment. Shrink-wrap plastic should either be done away with entirely or replaced with a bioplastic. There is no single solution but single-use plastics should never have become a th
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we should identify and optimize their consumption of plastics in a way that doesn't release CO2.
Most of the available energy in plastics is from oxidizing their hydrocarbons resulting in mostly water and CO2. And if you go an anoxic route then you're likely to end up with lots of methane. I can't see this doing us any favors in the GHG department.
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Most of the available energy in plastics is from oxidizing their hydrocarbons resulting in mostly water and CO2.
Nature does everything in baby steps which means it's not processing the entirety of the plastic. If they did, they would be releasing a large amount of energy which means they would multiply like mad. There is an interesting balance for stuff on the subgram scale where if they are too successful, they destroy their feeding ground and die. This is why hot viruses die out quickly, they over-consume. I suspect the same will happen with plastic eating bacteria because they will become extremely populous an
Old genes if not old news: (Score:2)
This is completely not surprising to me.
Evolve makes it sound like these are new mutations. Not usually. They just are present in a very small percentage of a given group of microbes. Nature keeps around a lot of potentially useful things in genomes by having them only present in fairly rare individuals of the species. That way, the cost of keeping them around is low in terms of genome space and energy to replicate them/produce the relevant proteins.
Bacteria use a trick called horizontal gene transfer to qu
What if (Score:2)
What if some algae evolves to be a super-consumer of CO2, and there is some massive oceanic explosion of this algae and we have a massive reduction of CO2 causing an ice age?
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Thermodynamics.
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Water and CO2 (dissolved as H2CO3) are available in limitless quantity to any microorganisms in the ocean, as are common ions (sodium/potassium/chloride). Nitrates/nitrites are all ultimately synthesized from N2 gas by bugs at some point. Sunlight is basically limitless in the trophic layer, relative to the amount that metabolism uses.
The limiting component is, I believe, phos
Sounds promising (Score:3)
But can they digest a stack of compuserv discs?
Picky bug (Score:2)
I got a picky bug that will only eat AOL floppies no matter what else I offer it.
Great new weapon (Score:2)
Drop bacteria on $enemy that eat the materials that are vital for $enemy's infrastructure. Just got to choose something that is not important in your infrastructure.
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Problem for some, solution for most (Score:2)
The honest truth is there are really 2 uses for plastics:
Disposable vs Long term use.
We use a lot of plastic for things that are stupidly short lived. Straws, saran wrap, food containers, bic pens, All of these are used once, then thrown away. Some are in use for as little as hours (saran wrap for example).
The second type is long term usage. Light switch face plates, mechanical pencils, polyester clothing, lamp shades, car parts, pipes, building parts etc. These things are intended to be used for decad
This Could Really Put A Squeeze on the Breast . (Score:1)
Yeah, I read Mutant 59: The Plastic Eaters (Score:2)
It was during The Golden Age of Science Fiction (I was around 14) and IIRC it was a selection of The Science Fiction Book Club.
Lots of decent stuff from them, some of which I still remember. Wilson Tucker's The Time Masters had everything a young boy could want, lol, from Gilgamesh to a drop dead gorgeous, and murderous, semi-telepathic Immortal who had worked with Von Braun to develop rockets, and was now married to an American scientist.
There goes our immune response (Score:1)
what are the digestion by-products? (Score:1)
Non-biodegradable waste plastic is a carbon sink at the moment. If these are aerobic bacteria then pretty sure they will emit CO2 when digesting it. Which is arguably going to be bigger problem than the original plastic waste.