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Maybe the only thing more worrisome than microplastics everywhere is unstoppable plastics eating organisms everywhere, eating through all plastics everywhere.
by spockz 1mo ago
Maybe the only thing more worrisome than microplastics everywhere is unstoppable plastics eating organisms everywhere, eating through all plastics everywhere.
- righthand 1mo agoSuch as in The Andromeda Strain?
- piloto_ciego 1mo agoThere’s a fantastically silly but fun book about this the name of which eludes me.
- mocheeze 1mo agoNot plastic, but 'Cats Cradle' by Kurt Vonnegut has something kind of like that.
- stevekemp 1mo agoMutant 59: The Plastic Eaters, a 1971 British sci-fi environmental disaster novel written by medical scientist Kit Pedler and television screenwriter Gerry Davis. No wikipedia page, but goodreads has it here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/99852816-mutant-59 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/99852816-mutant-59
- piloto_ciego 1mo agoThat wasn’t it; I just found it, it’s called Ill Wind by Kevin J Anderson
- ch4s3 1mo agoUsually these bioengineered yeasts need pretty specific growth conditions in order to eat in this case ethylene glycol, not raw finished plastic. In this case they say "plastic-derived substrates" which means they're pre-processing the waste plastic.
- cortesoft 1mo agoGood thing microorganisms are famous for their slow rate of change in dynamic environments…
- ch4s3 1mo agoI'm not sure what this adds. The yeast here is chomping ethylene glycol for carbon, and tons of soil bacteria can already do that. And I should add that highly specialized industrial/lab yeasts have existed for a long time and aren't prevalent in the environment, they just don't like to grow outside of narrow(ish) conditions. Highly prevalent wild yeasts tend to eat a variety of sugars, not glycol.
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- tantalor 1mo agoOf course, the lysine contingency.
- shevy-java 1mo ago> bioengineered yeasts need pretty specific growth conditions In a natural environment this will not hold. Organisms are unstable; they change all the time, simpler ones even more so. Mutants with a faster growth rate will, up to a certain maximum, take over from slower growing or growth-deficient mutants. There isn't really a compelling growth advantage for plastic-degrading organisms, which is one reason why plastic stays so long in the environment. All pre-processing steps further add to the cost, so we will year after year hear about it - and then wonder why nothing happens and plastics keep compounding in the ocean. And this is not new either: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_v._Chakrabarty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_v._Chakrabarty
- bryanrasmussen 1mo ago>In a natural environment this will not hold. Organisms are unstable; they change all the time, simpler ones even more so. Jurassic narratives notwithstanding, unsure if this is a real problem. If you have a yeast that will only survive under narrow unnatural circumstances, I would expect freeing it into the wild with natural circumstances means it dies - not uses nature to find a way to destroy the world as a form of poetic justice for ever having been created.
- ryanisnan 1mo agoReminds me of the Taumoeba escaping the Xenonite enclosures.
- phoronixrly 1mo agoYeah, that was for plot reasons...
- fc417fc802 1mo agoPerhaps soon you'll be needing to apply stains or sealants to your outdoor plastic items. Maybe even purchase treated plastic products that we worry leach toxic chemicals into their surroundings.
- SoftTalker 1mo agoYou already do if they sit in the sun. The UV light breaks down plastic pretty quickly.
- simmerup 1mo agoWhy is that worrisome? Might give the fish a chance whose bellies are filling up with plastic rubbish
- serf 1mo agofor all the reasons in the book/movie/television show 'The Andromeda Strain'.
- masklinn 1mo agoTimescale is the important bit. If organisms degrade plastics in a few hundred years then what plastics are uniquely valuable for will be quite fine indeed.
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- weaksauce 1mo agothere was a time in history before fungus came along and ate trees so there were just a huge amount of trees around that couldn't decay. (which is why we have coal actually) this could be something akin to that.
- patwolf 1mo agoI've heard that the prevailing theory now is that it wasn't the lack of fungus that made coal. Instead, the earth was covered in tropical wetlands, and trees couldn't decay in the anoxic water.
- SoftTalker 1mo agoNo termites either.
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]