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Scientists use bacteria to turn plastic waste into paracetamol
- doitLP 1y agoParacetamol also known as Tylenol, Panadol and plain old acetaminophen
- frogulis 1y agoCan't speak for the UK, but in Australia at least, "paracetamol" is the most commonly used non-brand name.
- asplake 1y agoUK too. Edit: > Paracetamol is the Australian Approved Name and British Approved Name as well as the international nonproprietary name used by the WHO and in many other countries; acetaminophen is the United States Adopted Name and Japanese Accepted Name and also the name generally used in Canada, Venezuela, Colombia, and Iran. Both paracetamol and acetaminophen are contractions of chemical names for the compound. Source: Wikipedia
- cyberge99 1y agoGood to know the USA has something in common with IRAN. Perhaps start building from there.
- ioma8 1y agoParalen in Czech republic.
- aduwah 1y agoGeordie apocalypse is becoming reality https://youtu.be/ctQXDpXTNZc?si=r52UCpxSN3fgjZfq https://youtu.be/ctQXDpXTNZc?si=r52UCpxSN3fgjZfq
- lawlessone 1y agoCould they put it in an mRNA vaccine so my body can break down plastic?
- Arubis 1y agoThe plastic in your body might be _less_ toxic than paracetamol.
- lawlessone 1y agoProbably true , but my body can already remove the paracetamol
- Arubis 1y agoThat’d actually be a neat balance to figure out. Would the increased short-term liver toxicity be better over the long run than having bloodborne microplastics persist?
- xattt 1y ago> … can already remove the paracetamol In amounts less than 4 grams every 24 hours.
- oharapj 1y agoDepending on how quickly the body would convert the plastic in this highly unrealistic hypothetical, that might work out just fine
- colechristensen 1y agoThe major part of this discovery was about something that e. coli already did on its own before genetic modification, so no not particularly. They might be able to engineer a symbiotic bacterium to live in your blood (there's a lot of doubt here), or more likely and less risky engineer a bacterium that consumed microplastics to live in your gut delivered as a probiotic or as a "vaccine" that you ate that would infect your existing microbiome. And not an mRNA vaccine, those are kind of too simple and are mainly there to annoy the immune system. You would either use a virus to inject new genes into bacteria or insert plasmids into bacteria in a lab which would later be consumed.
- tux3 1y agoSo, taking a non-expert look at the actual study, it looks like they first depolimerize PET into some acyl hydroxamate as a preparatory step. Then it seems the big finding here is that this Lossen rearrangement, a regular non-biological chemical step, doesn't kill E. Coli. They derive PABA from that step. And the E. Coli hasn't done anything yet, but since it's still alive, the cute trick is to turn PABA into APAP (acetaminophen). We already knew how to do that, but I suppose it demonstrates the point Now what I don't get is what was wrong with running the Lossen step separately, and only feeding the output to the bacteria. This article makes it sound like a miracle way to turn plastic into small molecules. They found that one of the step won't kill E. Coli. But it seems like all the steps were already possible before.
- d4mi3n 1y agoI know nothing about this, but it seems like the kind of distinction that might make something easier/cheaper in practice. As in, do everything in a vat rather than needing to filter and pipe things around in a chemical facility.
- 6d6b73 1y agoOh so now we can just ingest the bacteria and be pain free because of all the micro plastics in our body. Wonder what has more side effects?
- melagonster 1y agoIf blood contain enough bacteria, we have more problem should worry.
- casey2 1y agoI wish there were 10 stories on how reducing plastic production would help clean up the waste problem for every innovation theater story like this