Hooray! Now can they make one that only eats Trump?

Wasn't there a fungus that was discovered several years ago that eats plastic? It looked like a mushroom. I can't remember the year I read that.

And that's how the zombie apocalypse started kids..

Actually the article indicated that the new research was spurred by the discovery in 2016 of the first bacterium that had naturally evolved to eat plastic, at a waste dump in Japan. Scientists have now revealed the detailed structure of the crucial enzyme produced by the bug. This is perhaps further proof of evolution. Scientists are enhancing the bactreria which evolved to eat the PET plastic.

Good. Send it to the pacific

I love this !! lets hope it gets some positive use

I'd rather it went into the machine the Japanese gentleman invented to create oil, otherwise all that mining for nothing! [hoaxorfact.com]

I just start thinking of stargate and the spider thingies that ate everything !!

And what will we feed it when we are out of plastic bottles?

That is exciting!

Can you imagine it eating every plastic perhaps? will it just eat the stuff we don't want anymore?

With further research this could solve a LOT of problems. I'm excited to keep up with it and see where the studies go.

Does the enzyme only eat plastic? Finally a solution to all the junk floating in the ocean...

Beware...what happens when the emzyme starts eating all the plastic in our lives? Think of all the plastic that you use everyday.

This will be very bad if it produces methane in the process. The base enzyme is already in the wild. Then again... if it does produce methane... and becomes ubiquitous in the wild, it might very well mean collecting as much PET from the environment as we can, and never making more of it.

nom nom nom. Thanks for sharing this! It was a neat read!

Awesome!

That's probably the best news I've heard all year. Enzymes that digest plastic could be very useful to conservation efforts around the world. It creates a new way for us to get rid of trash with less detrimental effects to the environment. This just proves that nature has ways of solving our problems better than we could imagine.

They better start munching!! There's a world of plastic out there.

Let's just hope terrorists don't figure out a way to weaponize this, as most products are made o fplastic.

Serendipity. Could be great. hmmm, I do have some concerns, mostly because I do not know enough. ie, what are the bi-products/wastes?

And then their employer patents it and refuses it's widespread use unless paid for it though they were funded by the gov't.....

I wonder if this will hinder the industry to wean itself off sustainable ways of making plastic PET bottles? It's nice to be able to digest it but it's still problematic to depend on fossil fuels to continue to make it in the first place.
Wonder what is the byproduct the enzyme makes?
Also, I hope there will not be any resistance to commercializing this enzyme that must be produced by using "GMO" (woooo...bad scary word) microorganism (most probably yeast, maybe e. coli)?

just saw that pass in my FB feed!