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Newly discovered deep-sea enzyme breaks down PET plastic
- ginko 3y agoNow splice this into the genome of black mold and release it in a coca-cola bottling plant.
- tabtab 3y agoDon't laugh, someday a terrorist or hacker may engineer a fast-eating critter, and half our stuff will become useless in a year. Termites learned to work with gut microbes to speed up wood munching, a home-owner's biggest nightmare.
- izzydata 3y agoThat's still kind of funny in a existential hysteria kind of way.
- hansvm 3y agoHumans are pretty adaptable. If half our stuff did become useless do you think that might put a damper on rampant consumerism?
- hanniabu 3y agoIt would increase consumerism since everything would need to be replaced on a periodic basis
- BizarroLand 3y agoWith new plastics full of chemicals that the bugs won't eat.
- digging 3y agoEverything? I think instead, we'll just stop making most things out of plastics. We have longer-lasting, more durable materials than plastics already, for when you want something that will actually survive decades or generations. They're metals and woods and stones. Some things, like wire coatings, will still likely need to be plastic and will become disposable. But most uses of plastic for long-lasting goods will just stop using plastics. Goods will get much heavier, but more durable.
- ars 3y agoWoods? If wood can survive so can plastic in this hypothetical world. Just keep water away from the plastic.
- monocasa 3y agoLess fun, PET is heavily used in medical devices including implants. There's a huge cut to life expectancy if it becomes a secondary food source for something like an engineered MSRA strain.
- digging 3y agoMore reason to be furious at plastic peddling billionaires. They made us hostages. We still have to stop them, but it's going to hurt even more.
- Intralexical 3y agoEh. Thinking plastic would last forever was probably a reasonable assumption at the time. I doubt it was the billionaires making that design call. Though in hindsight maybe we should have known better, given the history of lignin and natural waxes. Though especially given the history of lignin, we probably have millions of years before medical devices being eaten by microbes becomes a widespread problem that anyone seriously needs to worry about. There's bigger fish to fry right now.
- digging 3y ago> Thinking plastic would last forever was probably a reasonable assumption at the time That's... not what I'm mad about at all.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- walnutclosefarm 3y agoThe Andromeda Strain!
- mattkrause 3y agoOr Peter Watts' Starfish, since it's from the deep sea
- digging 3y agoThere's one significant detail about Behemoth missing...
- Metacelsus 3y agoSounds like "Mutant 59"
- gilleain 3y agoSlightly misleading headline, as PET (polyethylene terephthalate) hydrolases were already known - see https://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/motm/PETase/PETaseh.htm https://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/motm/PETase/PETaseh.htm This is a study of an archaeal enzyme (from the deep-sea) that can degrade both long-chain and short-chain polymers that is more efficient at 70 deg C than other enzymes. The details are that this is a feruloyl esterase with a conserved alpha/beta-hydrolase fold but with an additional flexible 'lid' domain that covers the active site. The authors suggest this lid domain replaces the conserved Trp that is an Ala in the archaeal enzyme.
- pneumic 3y agoYeah, it's not bad news at all but it appears to be one of many that still require considerable heat, industrial infra, etc. Has anyone attempted to put these enzymes to the test in at some scale in an industrial setting, I wonder?
- hanniabu 3y agoShould work well in landfills since there's heat buildup
- gilleain 3y agoNo idea. From skimming some university press releases, I see a lot of "potential for!" and similar wording. This https://news.utexas.edu/2022/04/27/plastic-eating-enzyme-could-eliminate-billions-of-tons-of-landfill-waste/ https://news.utexas.edu/2022/04/27/plastic-eating-enzyme-cou... has "Up next, the team plans to work on scaling up enzyme production to prepare for industrial and environmental application. " which is more promising. As far as I understand, yes it is a very different challenge to make a bioreactor for actually using some random new enzyme than the (also hard) problem of getting the structure in the first place. How to immobilize it on some surface, how to pre-process the material to pass it through the reactor (?) I guess ...
- justaskme 3y agoFeels like it's always "potential for"... sigh
- multiplegeorges 3y agoSo dumping all our plastic in the sea will work out! /s It seems like these discoveries are coming quickly and in higher numbers. Maybe there's hope in recycling/processing plastics down simpler molecules after all. Currently, recycling plastic is a bit of a lie -- very little of it is actually recycled.
- kzrdude 3y agoI'm fearing that degradable plastics is also a lie.. is it just turning it into microplastics small enough that the problem visually disappears?
- Kerb_ 3y agoIt breaks them down into their atomic components and enables bacteria that can straight up digest plastic. The issue from this is that we rely on plastics not being degradable for a lot of the properties we use it for. Imagine if bugs got this enzyme in their gut bacteria, and started eating the food wrappers instead of just nibbling through them. Plastic used to seal sterile equipment in medical settings or for implants? Useless. The plastic waste would only last a few years relative to the decades+ now, but it would also ruin plastic's ability to seal stuff, which is why we use it. Overall, probably a good thing to reduce our reliance on plastic, but it will come at a cost, it's not just "we can dump plastic in the ocean now"
- coffeebeqn 3y agoIt would still be difficult for bugs to gnaw on solid plastic
- sproketboy 3y ago[dead]
- rand0mx1 3y agoAMP-Free link https://phys.org/news/2023-09-newly-deep-sea-enzyme-pet-plastic.html https://phys.org/news/2023-09-newly-deep-sea-enzyme-pet-plas...
- dang 3y agoChanged from https://phys.org/news/2023-09-newly-deep-sea-enzyme-pet-plastic.amp https://phys.org/news/2023-09-newly-deep-sea-enzyme-pet-plas.... Thanks!
- perlgeek 3y agoThank you phys.org for putting an actual link to the scientific publication, something that is missing far too often these days.
- Max-q 3y agoAs much plastic as we dump into nature now, we increase the chance for a mutation of a microbe being able to digest it. If that microbe manage to multiply and spread, plastic can start to rot, just like wood is doing now. On a long term basis, that might be a good thing, but in the short term it would be a catastrophy. We are using plastic as a long lasting material, often with no surface treatment. Imagine if wire insulation, waterproof encapsulation, gaskets and other important parts of our infrastructure starts to rapidly degrade! That alone should be motivation for cleaning up and stop spreading plastic waste in nature.
- vagab0nd 3y agoNot to undermine your point about cleaning up plastic, but following your logic: isn't this similar to the antibiotics situation, just maybe on a longer time scale? The more you use it the less effective it is. What's the ultimate solution?
- yukkuri 3y agoWalls and ladders. There isn't a solution to evolution, you just have to keep adapting.
- Intralexical 3y agoIs it feasible for something like, e.g., teflon to be decomposed biologically?
- geoelectric 3y agoIIRC, “plastic eater” was one of the mutations of The Andromeda Strain in the eponymous Crichton novel.
- Tagbert 3y agoWood doesn’t spontaneously rot at a rate that is problematic. This new enzyme requires temperatures of around 70C to operate. Any microbe that does evolve to eat plastic will probably need some specific living conditions. They are unlikely to be so efficient and universal that we see plastic rotting while we are using it.
- zellyn 3y agoI love the idea of finding enzymes that break down plastics. I also like to imagine the post-apocalyptic Sci-Fi short story possibilities of accidentally releasing something that breaks down _all_ plastic! Imagine my delight in reading this: At the molecular level, PET46 is very similar to another enzyme, ferulic acid esterase. This degrades the natural polymer lignin in plant cell walls by breaking down lignin polymers to release sugars from woody plant parts. Lignin and PET have many structural similarities, so the PET-degrading enzymes found in nature may be important for composting wood in forest soils, for example. Now, join me in imagining the post-apocalyptic Sci-Fi short story possibilities of accidentally releasing something that breaks down all plastic _and_ all plants! I mean, until some of them finally adapt.
- lanstin 3y agoUnlike the plastic substrate of modern technological society, plants have survived hundreds of millions of years of efforts by the rest of the biosphere to eat them.
- kwhitefoot 3y agoWhy do we want to break down PET? Why not just re-use it?
- Intralexical 3y agoHeat, stress, and light will probably break it down mechanically over time no matter how diligent you are about reusing or recycling it. At the very least, this should hopefully mean that all those scary endocrine-disrupting and bioaccumulating microplastic and nanoplastic particles that are apparently being shed by the millions every time you heat or handle anything plastic aren't necessarily going to keep building up forever.
- wahnfrieden 3y agoMost is not reused, or only reused with limited capacity
- dzdt 3y agoThe way to understand the origin of fossil fuel deposits is that hundreds of millions of years ago trees were made of plastic. Thats not quite literally true but it gives the right sense. In the Carboniferous period trees grew abundently but there were not yet bacteria that could break down the lignins composing the woody structure. Its very similar to what you'd get with plastic trees today: they would fall and pile up like junk in a landfill. Then eventually this would be buried and result in the many-meters-thick coal deposits we find today. Lessons? I don't know. But piles of un-decomposable hydrocarbons is not a new thing for the planet.
- morsch 3y agoWhen I searched for this, I found there to be some debate on it (isn't there always?): https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1517943113 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1517943113 https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01/why-was-most-of-the-earths-coal-made-all-at-once/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01/why-was-most-of-the-...
- dzdt 3y agoThanks! Your newer research is pretty convincing. Makes me a bit sad: I really like the 'plastic tree' analogy. Ah, well.
- m463 3y agoIt's interesting to read about thomas gold's theories about hydrocarbons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin To me it makes sense that some or all hydrocarbons are or at least started like the hydrocarbons found on other planets in our solar system.
- bno1 3y agoI wonder what forests looked back then. Trees going through and on piles of dead trees?
- FredPret 3y agoIt's really awesome that all our plastic will one day rot. But we have lots of pipes and cables underground that will need to be replaced - with what I wonder.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]