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If there are bacteria that can feed on plastic (not saying there aren't), wouldn't they have essentially no competition and thus thrive in plastic polluted envi
by sfn42 2y ago
If there are bacteria that can feed on plastic (not saying there aren't), wouldn't they have essentially no competition and thus thrive in plastic polluted environments?
- bamboozled 2y agoThey are bacteria, they convert plastic to energy for fu and then get eaten by other bacteria, they don’t turn into plastic.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- madaxe_again 2y agoOnly if plastic is a better energy source than other energy sources they can already consume. I mean, if we had an obligate plastivore then yes, what you describe would happen, but I guess we haven’t - yet.
- lazide 2y agoThere are plastic eating bacteria [https://letstalkscience.ca/educational-resources/backgrounders/plastic-eating-bacteria-natures-recyclers https://letstalkscience.ca/educational-resources/backgrounde...]. Human cells can also (mostly) function anaerobically (aka in low-oxygen environments). It’s terribly inefficient though, and we can only do it for limited periods of time before something bad starts to happen to the overall organism. So we prefer oxygen, and as long as we have oxygen rich environments, we’re never going to get that much better at being anaerobic eh?
- bluGill 2y agoDo those exist? Plastic is everywhere in small quantities, but so are lots of other things bacteria can feed on in those environments. Those other things also have the advantage of being part of a eco system meaning that more of it grows in ways bacteria can exploit.