6 ms·

Is anyone else concerned about the effects this could have if it managed to get out of containment and into the wild? A self-replicating bacteria that eats plas

Is anyone else concerned about the effects this could have if it managed to get out of containment and into the wild? A self-replicating bacteria that eats plastics sounds like a potentially catastrophic event, considering how much we use them in day to day life.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
Yup. The whole reason we use plastic for everything is because it's cheap and mostly inert (i.e. doesn't break down in the environment). If plastic starts rotting we are going to be in for a really bad time. It's difficult to even imagine the cost of all the damage. Seems like we're a decently far way off from that point though.
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
  It pains me to think about all the plastic items I’ve bought over the years that weren’t up to the task; degraded in the sun to the point of failure; or otherwise ended up in landfill. Ideally any bacteria, or other microbes, would only breakdown plastics under certain conditions, probably in some kind of bioreactor.
funklute 7y ago
If you bothered to actually read the article, you'd see that this is a microbe that already exists in the wild.
- droffel 7y ago
  I imagine the plan is to engineer it to increase its potency. It's clearly not at a dangerous/critical point in its current form.
  - dmos62 7y ago
    Extremely rapidly degrading plastics would still be a better situation than extremely slowly degrading plastics.
- xwkd 7y ago
  It might have been better to say, “In the article, they say that this is a microbe that already exists in the wild.” Your words make you sound rude, though you may not have meant to be.
  - funklute 7y ago
    Thank you, I'm quite aware that it made me sound rude. I don't think that hypothetical scare-mongering is very useful in this context. Especially not when it risks mis-representing what the article was actually about. Then it just contributes to the kind of information noise you can find many other places on the internet.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
      The HN site guidelines ask us to be kind: Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. And to specifically not do what you’ve done here: Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that." If a comment inspires you to say something insightful or interesting, say it. Otherwise maybe don’t. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- ryanianian 7y ago
  Don't assume someone hasn't read the article. It currently exists in the wild but states only that scientists "managed to isolate a bacterium", indicating that it is not abundant and likely not capable of working at a large scale. The obvious question of "what happens when [the industrial version of] this gets out" is a reasonable one that the article doesn't even address.
peteradio 7y ago
I used to think about that, but there really isn't that much plastic to sustain something like that. I know it might seem like there is tons and tons of plastic around and blowing in the wind and in our oceans, but the amount needed for a "infection" of this microbe to take hold would need to be many orders of magnitude higher.
- mrob 7y ago
  It's not the mass of plastic, but the surface area. Microplastics have very high surface area to mass ratio, so large numbers of microbes have access to them. I expect to see rotting plastics in my lifetime. But this isn't necessarily a disaster. Many uses (e.g. food packaging) are still possible with biodegradable plastics, and for critical things like medical equipment we have fluorinated plastics, which are very resistant to anything a microbe could do. For everything else we'll just have to revert to wood and metal. This will mean paying more attention to repair and maintenance, and less disposable products.
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  You don't have to see it, for microbes to find it. We are aware that those tiny spheres of plastic made for facial scrubs, are now everywhere including Antarctica, right? So a microbe that can eat that, will find ready food everywhere, on every continent?
amelius 7y ago
Just wash your hands before touching your AirPods :)
KarlKemp 7y ago
Wood is easily degradable under the right conditions, but that isn’t a major problem for us. I’m almost certain, for example, that 99% of plastic in use today is in environments that are too dry for bacteria.
- c22 7y ago
  Of course the places where plastic is used specifically because it doesn't rot in damp environments probably include some of its more critical deployments.
JulianMorrison 7y ago
We use too much plastic, too casually, wastefully, with eventual results of microplastic and carbon release into the atmosphere. I would not weep in the least if this stuff blew around world-over and forced us to change our behaviour.
- TausAmmer 7y ago
  Just like woo flu
- holoduke 7y ago
  I think you generalize it too much. There are many different plastics with many different properties. Some will degrade in a few years, others take a thousand years. Some degrade to micro particles floating in our seas for a long time. Others do not and can be even eaten.
- shawnz 7y ago
  Some usages of plastics are essential. What about in medicine for example?
  - MaxBarraclough 7y ago
    Right, exactly. A runaway bacterium that ate medical equipment, electronic equipment, industrial equipment, vehicles, food packaging... that would be a Bad Thing. It would mean an end to much of the modern world. I'm reminded of a reddit discussion on how awful it would be if a coronal mass ejection event destroyed all electronics on Earth. They were lamenting how tragic the loss of Netflix would be given the current lock-down, oblivious to that it would presumably result in society collapsing, with millions or billions dying in the ensuing famine.
    - imtringued 7y ago
      Bacteria fail to eat our organic wooden houses.
      - 7y ago
webreac 7y ago
A bactery that eat oil and you have the movie mad max
- Rescis 7y ago
  There are cureently bacteria that eat diesel/gasoline, which is why if you leave either in your vehicle tank for a long period (1-6 months) , you shoud to siphon it out and replace it.
  - serf 7y ago
    No. Gasoline and diesel go bad because they are solutions of many hydrocarbons, and the lighter hydrocarbons are the first to evaporate, leaving a heavier-than-intended slurry of what's left plus accrued moisture from atmosphere. It has little to nothing to do with bacterial growth. 'Fuel Stabilizer', additives that are intended to be added to tanks of vehicles which must have fuel sitting in them for prolonged periods, are oils which are designed to prevent the evaporation of the lighter hydrocarbons and prevent water infiltration; usually through the use of molecules that either bond with water readily, or by layering oil atop the fuel mass to encapsulate it from evaporation to atmosphere.
    - exhilaration 7y ago
      leaving a heavier-than-intended slurry of what's left plus accrued moisture from atmosphere You didn't mention ethanol but that's what you mean. Normal gasoline is very stable, it's just the federally-mandated corn ethanol added to it that turns into sludge after a few months. Fuel stabilizer keeps that ethanol from degrading. I would advise anyone with small engines, like lawnmowers or snowblowers, to seek out ethanol-free gasoline and use that exclusively in those engines.
vervez 7y ago
Another possibility: the bacteria could be engineered to switch to a different metabolic mechansim, like the use of the lac operon to digest lactose instead of glucose whenever there's a scarcity of glucose. Although this envisages stably engineered bacteria that switch between plastic and regular metabolic process, which I'm not sure about the current feasibility/precision.
Kalium 7y ago
The article implies that this microbe was found in the wild, rather than engineered in a laboratory. The paper confirms it - https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2020.00404/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2020.0040... Bacteria that eats nylon was first found in the wild: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nylon-eating_bacteria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nylon-eating_bacteria With this in mind, it may be worth considering that plastic-eating bacteria that currently exist in the wild do not appear to present any significant threat of a catastrophic event. I'm sure it's just an oversight on my part, but can you help me understand why this newly identified strain would pose a threat?
- londons_explore 7y ago
  By selectively breeding them to be more efficient at breaking down plastics faster, one might be increasing the risk of a runaway 'plastic-rot'. I'm not concerned yet though, since current landfill sites are effectively perfect selective breeding grounds for 'plastic rot', yet so far we haven't detected any significant increase in the breakdown speeds of plastics in the environment.
wlll 7y ago
I once read a sci-fi book that featured a metal eating organism that was released as a weapon. Yeah, whenever humans engineer something to fix something else we've broken in the complex system that is earth, it seems like there's a high chance of it messing other stuff up and itself becoming a problem.
tigermelon 7y ago
grey goo scenario :)
serf 7y ago
a plastic eating pathogen is a prominent actor in 'The Andromeda Strain' [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Andromeda_Strain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Andromeda_Strain
- joshuaheard 7y ago
  My first thought. My second thought was a terrorist releasing this in a hospital.
seph-reed 7y ago
My friends and I played a card game in which the point was to write a short story. Our story was like so: Planet Earth had been evacuated, and all that was left was little robots. All of different types, performing different jobs, but with one major function: to rid the world of a microbe that turned all organic matter into crude oil. Initially this microbe was developed for plastics, but it got out of hand really quickly. Now, given the world was entirely covered, clean up was an impossible task, so most of the robots just gave up and "zenned out." They'd go into an infinite loop of impossibility and stay there. Our robots were a bit different and instead decided to just pretend to work. Eventually a catastrophic change happened wherin a small comet hit the Earth. Then growing from that point, all of the sludge began to crystalize. These crystals grew like plague, so any robot that became even an little bit glinty was sure to be a goner soon. The story ended with all our robots dying, having learned that humanity had sent the crystalizing thing, but also having seen greenery grow once again where the crystals had cleaned up.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago

Yup. The whole reason we use plastic for everything is because it's cheap and mostly inert (i.e. doesn't break down in the environment). If plastic starts rotting we are going to be in for a really bad time. It's difficult to even imagine the cost of all the damage. Seems like we're a decently far way off from that point though.

TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
It pains me to think about all the plastic items I’ve bought over the years that weren’t up to the task; degraded in the sun to the point of failure; or otherwise ended up in landfill. Ideally any bacteria, or other microbes, would only breakdown plastics under certain conditions, probably in some kind of bioreactor.

funklute 7y ago

If you bothered to actually read the article, you'd see that this is a microbe that already exists in the wild.

droffel 7y ago
I imagine the plan is to engineer it to increase its potency. It's clearly not at a dangerous/critical point in its current form.
- dmos62 7y ago
  Extremely rapidly degrading plastics would still be a better situation than extremely slowly degrading plastics.
xwkd 7y ago
It might have been better to say, “In the article, they say that this is a microbe that already exists in the wild.” Your words make you sound rude, though you may not have meant to be.
- funklute 7y ago
  Thank you, I'm quite aware that it made me sound rude. I don't think that hypothetical scare-mongering is very useful in this context. Especially not when it risks mis-representing what the article was actually about. Then it just contributes to the kind of information noise you can find many other places on the internet.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
    The HN site guidelines ask us to be kind: Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. And to specifically not do what you’ve done here: Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that." If a comment inspires you to say something insightful or interesting, say it. Otherwise maybe don’t. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
ryanianian 7y ago
Don't assume someone hasn't read the article. It currently exists in the wild but states only that scientists "managed to isolate a bacterium", indicating that it is not abundant and likely not capable of working at a large scale. The obvious question of "what happens when [the industrial version of] this gets out" is a reasonable one that the article doesn't even address.

peteradio 7y ago

I used to think about that, but there really isn't that much plastic to sustain something like that. I know it might seem like there is tons and tons of plastic around and blowing in the wind and in our oceans, but the amount needed for a "infection" of this microbe to take hold would need to be many orders of magnitude higher.

mrob 7y ago
It's not the mass of plastic, but the surface area. Microplastics have very high surface area to mass ratio, so large numbers of microbes have access to them. I expect to see rotting plastics in my lifetime. But this isn't necessarily a disaster. Many uses (e.g. food packaging) are still possible with biodegradable plastics, and for critical things like medical equipment we have fluorinated plastics, which are very resistant to anything a microbe could do. For everything else we'll just have to revert to wood and metal. This will mean paying more attention to repair and maintenance, and less disposable products.
JoeAltmaier 7y ago
You don't have to see it, for microbes to find it. We are aware that those tiny spheres of plastic made for facial scrubs, are now everywhere including Antarctica, right? So a microbe that can eat that, will find ready food everywhere, on every continent?

amelius 7y ago

Just wash your hands before touching your AirPods :)

KarlKemp 7y ago

Wood is easily degradable under the right conditions, but that isn’t a major problem for us. I’m almost certain, for example, that 99% of plastic in use today is in environments that are too dry for bacteria.

c22 7y ago
Of course the places where plastic is used specifically because it doesn't rot in damp environments probably include some of its more critical deployments.

JulianMorrison 7y ago

We use too much plastic, too casually, wastefully, with eventual results of microplastic and carbon release into the atmosphere. I would not weep in the least if this stuff blew around world-over and forced us to change our behaviour.

TausAmmer 7y ago
Just like woo flu
holoduke 7y ago
I think you generalize it too much. There are many different plastics with many different properties. Some will degrade in a few years, others take a thousand years. Some degrade to micro particles floating in our seas for a long time. Others do not and can be even eaten.
shawnz 7y ago
Some usages of plastics are essential. What about in medicine for example?
- MaxBarraclough 7y ago
  Right, exactly. A runaway bacterium that ate medical equipment, electronic equipment, industrial equipment, vehicles, food packaging... that would be a Bad Thing. It would mean an end to much of the modern world. I'm reminded of a reddit discussion on how awful it would be if a coronal mass ejection event destroyed all electronics on Earth. They were lamenting how tragic the loss of Netflix would be given the current lock-down, oblivious to that it would presumably result in society collapsing, with millions or billions dying in the ensuing famine.
  - imtringued 7y ago
    Bacteria fail to eat our organic wooden houses.
    - 7y ago

webreac 7y ago

A bactery that eat oil and you have the movie mad max

Rescis 7y ago
There are cureently bacteria that eat diesel/gasoline, which is why if you leave either in your vehicle tank for a long period (1-6 months) , you shoud to siphon it out and replace it.
- serf 7y ago
  No. Gasoline and diesel go bad because they are solutions of many hydrocarbons, and the lighter hydrocarbons are the first to evaporate, leaving a heavier-than-intended slurry of what's left plus accrued moisture from atmosphere. It has little to nothing to do with bacterial growth. 'Fuel Stabilizer', additives that are intended to be added to tanks of vehicles which must have fuel sitting in them for prolonged periods, are oils which are designed to prevent the evaporation of the lighter hydrocarbons and prevent water infiltration; usually through the use of molecules that either bond with water readily, or by layering oil atop the fuel mass to encapsulate it from evaporation to atmosphere.
  - exhilaration 7y ago
    leaving a heavier-than-intended slurry of what's left plus accrued moisture from atmosphere You didn't mention ethanol but that's what you mean. Normal gasoline is very stable, it's just the federally-mandated corn ethanol added to it that turns into sludge after a few months. Fuel stabilizer keeps that ethanol from degrading. I would advise anyone with small engines, like lawnmowers or snowblowers, to seek out ethanol-free gasoline and use that exclusively in those engines.

vervez 7y ago

Another possibility: the bacteria could be engineered to switch to a different metabolic mechansim, like the use of the lac operon to digest lactose instead of glucose whenever there's a scarcity of glucose. Although this envisages stably engineered bacteria that switch between plastic and regular metabolic process, which I'm not sure about the current feasibility/precision.

Kalium 7y ago

The article implies that this microbe was found in the wild, rather than engineered in a laboratory. The paper confirms it - https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2020.00404/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2020.0040... Bacteria that eats nylon was first found in the wild: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nylon-eating_bacteria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nylon-eating_bacteria With this in mind, it may be worth considering that plastic-eating bacteria that currently exist in the wild do not appear to present any significant threat of a catastrophic event. I'm sure it's just an oversight on my part, but can you help me understand why this newly identified strain would pose a threat?

londons_explore 7y ago
By selectively breeding them to be more efficient at breaking down plastics faster, one might be increasing the risk of a runaway 'plastic-rot'. I'm not concerned yet though, since current landfill sites are effectively perfect selective breeding grounds for 'plastic rot', yet so far we haven't detected any significant increase in the breakdown speeds of plastics in the environment.

wlll 7y ago

I once read a sci-fi book that featured a metal eating organism that was released as a weapon. Yeah, whenever humans engineer something to fix something else we've broken in the complex system that is earth, it seems like there's a high chance of it messing other stuff up and itself becoming a problem.

tigermelon 7y ago

grey goo scenario :)

serf 7y ago

a plastic eating pathogen is a prominent actor in 'The Andromeda Strain' [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Andromeda_Strain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Andromeda_Strain

joshuaheard 7y ago
My first thought. My second thought was a terrorist releasing this in a hospital.

seph-reed 7y ago

My friends and I played a card game in which the point was to write a short story. Our story was like so: Planet Earth had been evacuated, and all that was left was little robots. All of different types, performing different jobs, but with one major function: to rid the world of a microbe that turned all organic matter into crude oil. Initially this microbe was developed for plastics, but it got out of hand really quickly. Now, given the world was entirely covered, clean up was an impossible task, so most of the robots just gave up and "zenned out." They'd go into an infinite loop of impossibility and stay there. Our robots were a bit different and instead decided to just pretend to work. Eventually a catastrophic change happened wherin a small comet hit the Earth. Then growing from that point, all of the sludge began to crystalize. These crystals grew like plague, so any robot that became even an little bit glinty was sure to be a goner soon. The story ended with all our robots dying, having learned that humanity had sent the crystalizing thing, but also having seen greenery grow once again where the crystals had cleaned up.