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Scientists create artificial protein that can degrade PET plastics in bottles
- gilleain 3y agoNice. A few points: * This protein acts as a PETase - see also <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37659327 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37659327> - but may work at room temperature, and more efficiently * The term 'artificial protein' is a bit awkward - it's a modified version of an existing protein from an anemone (see : <https://www.rcsb.org/structure/4tsy https://www.rcsb.org/structure/4tsy>) * The scaffold protein is a pore-forming structure - where multiple trans-membrane helices come together, like melittin in bee venom - so they claim it could work as part of a membrane-bound complex
- flobosg 3y ago> The term 'artificial protein' is a bit awkward I agree. The proper term would be engineered protein, since it is a fusion of two existing protein domains: an already engineered cutinase (a PETase ancestor) with a pore-forming protein (FraC).
- haolez 3y agoWhat happens if eventually we find this protein in the wild? :)
- sandworm101 3y agoThe entire plastics industry is screwed. It is only a matter of time before bacteria evolve some way of getting at the energy stored in plastics. Once that happens, once plastics start to "rot" as they are eaten by bacteria, the impacts on our technology could be catastrophic. The world might looks very steampunk as metal and ceramics replace plastics.
- Leonelf 3y agoWood-eating bacteria already exist and we use wood as a material for many things. It's not like such bacteria just spread from breath, like covid-viruses...
- sandworm101 3y agoLook up shipworm, which historically took out many ships. Plenty of stuff eats wood quickly enough to cause issues. We have just evolved countermeasures. And trees are the product of a billion years of anti-predator evolution. Plastic is different than wood. It is homogenous and dead. Something like a plastic-eating bacteria might move through it exponentially.
- NegativeLatency 3y agoThere are plenty of old wooden houses still standing (even ones which predate modern plastic based paints), people still make boats out of wood too. I suspect similar things will happen with plastic, we'll learn to build and protect plastic in the way that we used to do with wood, and probably more stuff will be built out of stone.
- flobosg 3y agoThat variant would be a natural/wild-type one.
- mrob 3y agoWe already make many things from materials that can be degraded by microbes (wood, cotton, leather, etc.). They can be preserved by keeping them dry, or with paint or other surface treatments. For the rare circumstances where this is impossible (e.g. medical devices) we have fluoropolymers, which I'm confident aren't going to get degraded by microbes any time soon.
- dejj 3y agoA long time ago, wood (Lignin) wasn’t biodegradable. Trees just piled up instead of rotting. That resulted in oil deposits. These we turn into plastics. Bacteria acquiring genes to feed on plastics would lead to closing the circle again. Although supply will be cut short when humanity gives up producing plastics.
- wcoenen 3y ago> Trees just piled up instead of rotting. That resulted in oil deposits. That resulted in coal deposits of the Carboniferous. Not oil.
- rob74 3y ago"microplastics in bottles" is even more awkward - I mean, as long as they're part of a bottle, they're by definition not microplastics?
- pfdietz 3y agoMaybe they're very very small bottles.
- bell-cot 3y agoMajor omitted-from-headline limitation: It only works on PET plastic. (AKA "PETE", or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyethylene_terephthalate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyethylene_terephthalate - recycling number "1" or "01") Quibble: "microplastics in bottles" looks far more like keyword stuffing then a sensible description.
- lucb1e 3y agoI find the current title much more clear than requiring that people know what PET is. And if you're familiar enough to know what plastic types exist, you probably also realize that this won't be a miracle protein that can tackle a ton of different chemicals with this one innovation/advancement. Unless you're a chemical engineer, I can't think of a place where anyone would need to know what PET is. Bottle returns don't have different holes based on the recycling type, I can even throw glass and cans in with plastic bottles and it'll scan the label and sort it out. For me, I might have made a tentative guess that PET is used in bottles, and my dad inspects factories that produce that stuff and so it's not like I had no exposure to it (just no interest in the myriad of plastics we're trying to avoid)
- Filligree 3y agoAnyone who uses 3D printers would need to know what PET is, not to mention half a dozen other plastics. ;-) PLA is usually the go-to; it's ideal in nearly every respect except cost, especially its modern formulations. But PETG is still often used for its heat resistance, Polycarbonate is great for physical strength, ASA is lovely for outdoors work, ABS is still the cheapest option... and some people are crazy enough to print Nylon.
- bell-cot 3y agoOkay - "Scientists create artificial protein that can degrade a very common type of plastic".
- dang 3y agoI tried "Scientists create protein that can degrade a common plastic in bottles" as well but I think it's ok to say "PET" even if few people know what it is. It's implicit that it's (a) not all plastics and (b) the article will say what it is.
- peakskill 3y agoHow about microplastics in the body? :^]
- bcardarella 3y agoI see similar articles or research like twice a year. And nothing ever comes of it.
- permo-w 3y agoseriously. I'd say more often than that even. is it that they are being used and we're just not hearing it, or is there something holding them back?
- Erratic6576 3y agoA very important sentiment comes of it: don’t worry, politicians, The solution to this polluting agent is near. The more plastic we generate today, the sooner we are to finding a final solution which does not involve damaging our sacred revenue rate. There’s no need to destroy our perfect status quo
- asow92 3y agoMicroplastics are the "lead/asbestos poisoning" of our generation, and the problem is actually far more dire than either of the former. Someday, we will look back on how we could have ever allowed microplastics into our lives with shock and awe.
- unglaublich 3y agoWhy do we allow burning gigantic storages of carbohydrate fuels while we know full well that the planet's livability suffers from climate change? Why do we allow fueling our energy plants and automobiles with fossil fuels that causes air pollution responsible for 1/5 deaths world wide? [0] Why do we allow one-time use plastics and synthetic tire rubbers while knowing it causes irreversible microplastics pollution of land and sea? ... looking at you, fossil fuel lobbyists. [0]: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/c-change/news/fossil-fuel-air-pollution-responsible-for-1-in-5-deaths-worldwide/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/c-change/news/fossil-fuel-air-p...
- testfoobar 3y agoThe underlying cause of climate change, air pollution and waterways full of plastic waste is the Tragedy of the Commons. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/climate-change-is-a-fourfold-tragedy/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/climate-ch... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
- unglaublich 3y agoYep. We should have forced mining and oil companies to pay opportunity costs to our future self whenever they extract finite resources from the planet.
- no_moms_no_hugs 3y agoThe challenge is that those costs were not understood when these extractive heavy industries were stood up, and large parts of our legal and governance systems were set up to ensure that those industries could exist, presumably to enrich all of us (e.g., the mineral rights system). By the time the costs were understood, the owners of those industries had accrued enough capital from their operation to actively fight off challenges to them for decades. The tragedy is obvious, but I think it's an important example as we move forward with other dramatic and potentially disastrous technological changes. What happens if we discover conclusively in 15 years that observing recommendation-algorithm driven social media for more than an hour a day causes dementia? Would we move quickly to ban it, or would we endure a protracted fight with Meta, TikTok et. al. about our "right to scroll" while the damages accrue?
- citrin_ru 3y agoIs there any benefits to degrading plastic (using proteins or bacteria) if BPA/BPS will stay not degraded? From what I recon health harm comes not from plastic itself but from additives like BPA, BPS e. t. c.
- hx8 3y agoPerfect is the enemy of good. Plastic and Microplastics are an environmental hazard to animal life, with a specific threat to aquatic life. The plastic itself is a significant physical hazard for the life. The attached link has an incredible photo of a the scale of a small fish and various microplastics. It's important to note that currently there is no cost effective way for water treatment plants to filter for these. https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/microplastics/ https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/microplast...
- userbinator 3y agoFrom your own link: Scientists are still unsure whether consumed microplastics are harmful to human or animal health Because plastics are inert. Beware those who distort the truth and exploit fear for their own gains.
- hx8 3y ago"The number of published studies considering the effects of microplastic particles on aquatic organisms is considerable. In aquatic invertebrates, microplastics cause a decline in feeding behavior and fertility, slow down larval growth and development, increase oxygen consumption, and stimulate the production of reactive oxygen species. In fish, the microplastics may cause structural damage to the intestine, liver, gills, and brain, while affecting metabolic balance, behavior, and fertility; the degree of these harmful effects depends on the particle sizes and doses, as well as the exposure parameters." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9205308/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9205308/
- userbinator 3y ago
- DrThunder 3y agoHow do you keep something like this from spreading and deteriorating plastics in things you don't want it to?
- jdawg777 3y agoWe should stop focusing on recycling plastics and invest in garbage incinerators/power plants.
- jdiff 3y agoMore CO2 and a lovely cocktail of toxic gases, this doesn't sound like the elegant solution you're phrasing it as.
- bloak 3y agoA proper incinerator doesn't release toxic gases and generates electricity so perhaps fewer fossil fuels can be burnt while it's running so it's not quite as bad as how you're phrasing it either. I don't claim to know what's best out of recycle, incinerate, landfill and biodegrade. To me none of them seems obviously bad. Various calculations would need to be done.
- jdawg777 3y agoI just read the wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste-to-energy_plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste-to-energy_plant Some interesting points: "Waste-to-energy plants cause less air pollution than coal plants, but more than natural gas plants.[2] At the same time, it is carbon-negative: processing waste into fuel releases considerably less carbon and methane into the air than having waste decay away in landfills or bodies of water." "Burning municipal waste does produce significant amounts of dioxin and furan emissions[4] to the atmosphere as compared to the smaller amounts produced by burning coal or natural gas. Dioxins and furans are considered by many to be serious health hazards. However, advances in emission control designs and very stringent new governmental regulations, as well as public opposition to municipal waste incinerators, have caused large reductions in the amount of dioxins and furans produced by waste-to-energy plants."
- aranchelk 3y agoSearch "waste to energy Sweden". It's not perfect, but they have emissions standards and they do filtration. It's probably significantly better than pretending to recycle the stuff and then burning fuel to ship it somewhere else.
- lasermike026 3y agoWhile that nice the goal is to significantly reduce the use of plastics and petrochemical in general. What we are talking about is a reengining of modern tools and products. These efforts will be aggressive.
- lysozyme 3y agoAs cool as this is, the word “microplastics” is a little misleading. There are dozens of types of plastic in common use, each made from a different monomer with a different chemical linkage, of which PET is only one. The engineered protein in TFA will only work on PET and we’ll need to design new proteins for the other types of plastic. (I can help with that.) The problem with enzymes eating plastic is that enzymes are small Pacman-shaped protein blobs that are maybe 10 nanometers in diameter, whereas things made of plastic like bottles or even microplastics are huge in comparison. How do you get the little Pacman jaws around the bottle to start breaking it down? The research paper [1] describes the authors’ effective innovation. They make a protein where one end is a pore-forming shape, and the other end is a PET cutting (called a PETase in the jargon of the field). This way, their protein can access nooks and crannies in the macroplastic shapes, allowing tons of copies of this small enzyme to fully degrade a bottle. Without this, a great deal of physical agitation is required to break down the plastics into small enough chunks that earlier Pacman enzymes could work on, increasing the time and the cost. I hope we’ll see the idea of linking the enzymatic “scissors” to a protein pore be used to engineer enzymes to degrade other types of plastics in the future, as the general idea of getting the catalytic machinery into physical contact with every bit of the bottle is broadly applicable to all plastics, not just PET (which is great news) 1. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-scientists-artificial-protein-capable-degrading.html https://phys.org/news/2023-10-scientists-artificial-protein-...
- whatshisface 3y agoI don't really see why there is a problem with degrading whole bottles. If you have separated from the waste stream, you can incinerate or even landfill them (it's not like you'd be wasting any resources). It's the microplastics that form when the bottles are dumped into the oceans or waterways and broken up by Nature which need a novel solution for removal.
- readyplayernull 3y agoPlastic aren't simply plastics, they have lots of additives to give them different properties. Incinerating is transforming these additives into other chemicals maybe making more toxic molecules escape to the environment in ashes, dust, smoke. And landfilling is storing trash for future generations to solve the problem.
- troupe 3y agoThis announcement sounds like something mentioned in the background on TV while the soon to be hero eats breakfast before heading to work in an underpaid thankless position. 15 minutes later the audience learns that the protein has escaped the lab, become sentient, and is assembling plastic into Godzilla.
- lucb1e 3y agoWith these articles I always wonder what they're turned into, since headlines and introductory paragraphs always conveniently omit that. These seem to be the relevant parts of the article: > degrading PET [particles] and reducing them to their essential components, which would allow them to be broken down or recycled > "One variant breaks down the PET particles more thoroughly, so it could be used for degradation in sewage treatment plants. The other gives rise to the initial components needed for recycling. In this way we can purify or recycle, depending on the needs," explains Laura Fernández López Hmm, so that sounds like it's a step forwards (working the problem), but not yet a solution that can recycle PET into something anyone can use Edit: this is why I'm asking... Article: "... the bacterium Idionella sakaiensis, which is capable of degrading this type of plastic and was discovered in 2016 in a packaging recycling plant in Japan." Wikipedia on Ideonella sakaiensis: "[they] mineralize 75% of the degraded PET into carbon dioxide" (to be fair, it also produces a "MHETase enzyme" which "could also be optimized and used in recycling or bioremediation applications") https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideonella_sakaiensis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideonella_sakaiensis
- jokoon 3y agoI wish hacker news was only about computing and not fringe science news, because unless it's an innovative product and it shows it's a breakthrough, it's probably techno-optimism or it's click-baity. This applies for everything about batteries, and environmental techs. The supraconductor crystal news was also quite a revealing event of the problem.
- nashashmi 3y agoYou need a filter. Maybe an AI filter?
- passwordoops 3y agoPlastic eating enzymes have been a thing since the 90s. There's a breathless headline every 3-6 months. None get out of the lab
- RajT88 3y agoLess frequently we get articles about mealworms evolving the ability to eat plastics.
- just_boost_it 3y agoIt would be an interesting world if all our plastics started to rot. Water and sewerage piping is mostly plastic, there's heavy uses of plastics in electrical infrastructure, the majority of our containers, many car parts, the bulk of the housings of our electronics, building weatherproofing, most of our clothing... It would be nice to use other materials, but plastics are used because they're cheap, easy to work with, and they work well. Also, how much plastic has been produced over the last 100 years? It also would have been nice not to have just thrown it all into a landfill, but now that it's there do we really want to release all the CO2 that's been safely locked away underground in solid plastic?
- no_moms_no_hugs 3y agoPlastics are largely cheap because they're bi-products of natural gas, gasoline and diesel fuel manufacturing. As demand for those fuels declines, plastics will necessarily become more expensive. They certainly have a lot of inherent utility, but given the emerging risks to the planet's ecology and our own health, I think it's hard to see a future where we extensively use plastics to the same extent we do now.
- sholladay 3y agoI’d love to get a sense of how much less plastic will be made - or how much more it will cost - as renewable energy and electric vehicles replace fossil fuels. Has someone modeled this?
- zackmorris 3y agoI'd like to know who originally put incompatible types of plastic under the same number, which contaminates recycling runs. Like PET/PETE under "1" and injection-molded/blow-molded HDPE under "2": https://www.warwickri.gov/sanitation-recycling/faq/why-cant-all-plastics-be-recycled https://www.warwickri.gov/sanitation-recycling/faq/why-cant-... Many cities have banned recycling the most commonly used plastics, like plastic water bottles made of 1 (PET). Where I live, 1 and 2 get recycled, 3 (PVC) gets thrown in a landfill and 4-7 get sent to a separate refinery which converts them to diesel fuel. Not to mention that there seems to be no standard on the legibility of the number. How many people reading this have thought about automating recycling by having machine learning sort the types? Yet I've never seen "recycling engineer" as a job title. Nor have I seen any grants for improving recycling. Nor any corporations/billionaires making recycling a priority. There have even been TV shows by prominent celebrities pushing propaganda against recycling, like the Penn & Teller: Bullsh*t! episode from the post Dot Bomb luddite era of 2004: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0771119/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0771119/ We're willing to drink a protein that can degrade plastic before we're willing to hold industry accountable for the waste it produces?
- kragen 3y agopete isn't a different kind of plastic from pet, it's just a usa-only abbreviation to avoid the non-plastic-related pet trademark the pet company uses on their disposable drinking vessels made from whatever material the broader point is valid that recycling even hdpe is difficult because of the diversity of fillers and other additives, not to mention variation in molecular weight even before scission by ultraviolet, hydrolysis, or the heat of the molding process there are in fact people who make a living by recycling. until recently around here they even bought pet, offering lower prices for the colored pet (because with pet you really can economically separate out the fillers and additives and repolymerize it to a known molecular weight) mostly they recycle paper (mostly cardboard), copper, bronze, brass, lead, and aluminum. glass, steel, concrete, and plastics can be recycled but it's hard to make it profitable if you hold industry liable for damage done by people improperly discarding its products, soon you will have no industry
- 3y ago
- CptFribble 3y agoAnother story about waste "solutions," another opportunity to remind the gentle readers about plasma gasification. A re-post of an earlier comment of mine on the topic follows: --- Why are we still not talking about plasma gasification? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification As far as I can tell, the only real "disadvantages" if you can call them that, are: 1. more expensive than throwing the garbage in a big pile somewhere 2. need to clean it from time to time 3. not necessarily a profitable business Other than that, it can handle just about anything that's not radioactive, can be designed to produce 0 toxic byproducts, and can run at or at least only slightly below energy neutral. Plasma gasifiers can also consume a huge amount of garbage for their size, so much so that the US Navy is starting to put them on the latest generation of aircraft carriers. Not building out more gasifiers seems to me a failure of the free market. Because it's hard to make it profitable, no one is doing it - when really we should just be building one or two near every major city and funneling all our garbage there. In theory, we could build out enough to start working through all the landfills too.
- 01100011 3y agoDoes plasma gasification result in plastic monomers that can be used as building blocks for new polymers? If not, it seems like it is addressing a different need.
- kragen 3y agothis novel process seems to produce carbon dioxide and water, not terephthalic acid
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y agoah, CO2 ... we've been looking for a new source of this extremely rare material for some time now, I hear.
- Roritharr 3y agoI'm thinking in the same way, just would love a slimmed down domestic version. The inefficiency of garbage trucks hauling waste around should easily cover the cost of energy for both gasification and the reduction of pollution to acceptable levels. This would also bring you the added benefit of actually knowing that your waste does not contribute to introducing harmful toxins to groundwater supply or even the sea.
- larodi 3y agoNature created mycelium which eats microplastics (and all kinds of carbohydrates) for lunch and grows shrooms on top of it. Not sure why we need artificial proteins for that.
- monista 3y agoIt's good news, but reminded me at once Mutant 59: The Plastic Eaters (1971) by Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis, where a bacteria made to utilize plastic went wild and started destroying wire isolation everywhere, causing multiple crashes etc.
- TuringNYC 3y agoReminded me of Ice-9
- EasyTiger_ 3y agoThe whole "microplastics" thing is terrifyging