Scientists Find Plastic-Eating Fungus Feasting on Great Pacific Garbage Patch
Scientists Find Plastic-Eating Fungus Feasting on Great Pacific Garbage Patch
Marine scientists discovered an ocean-borne fungus chomping through plastic trash in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/16488358
Scientists Find Plastic-Eating Fungus Feasting on Great Pacific Garbage Patch
Sounds like great news, no?
Just as we had a time before fungus digesting plant matter, we've now had a time before fungus digesting plastics.
"Soon" we'll get bacteria and insects doing the same, and all our plastic buildings will need to be protected just as the wood ones.
Can't wait to get a fungus infection that starts eating the micro plastics in my testicles.
I guess all plastic will be biodegradable eventually.
Not really good news for the plastic that isnt waste. Plastic pipes or structures in buildings that were meant to last decades we dont want eaten away by fungus
For earth and the surviving creatures on it this is probably great news, but this is probably going to be a problem for humans in the short term. Plastic is this magic material that is immune to degradation and microbes, now that is no longer the case.
Ultimately that will be a good thing, but think about sanitized plastic medical equipment, now it can slowly be eaten up by microbes that we didn't have to worry about before.
"Nature finds a way" -- Dr. Ian Malcolm
The plastic simply was a too nice of an energy source to be left aside by microorganisms. There are microorganisms for basically any energy source the world provides. There are bacteria that live on undersea volcanoes feasting on acids and carbon dioxide, so a fungus eating plastic is no actual surprise.
"...at a rate of roughly 0.05 percent per day ... would take a very long time" ... but by my quick calculation 0.9995^3650 is 84% per decade, which is not long. Almost instantaneous on a geological timescale - and think how much the world changed when fungi learned how to digest lignin in wood - ending the era of coal-forming swamps.
I can't tell if it's a good news or bad news.
Assuming it doesn't evolve the ability to digest human flesh after it eats all the plastic, I think this is great news.
Yeah, the plastic eatings sometgings never process the toxic bits.
I would really like to know what's the resulting materials after the breaking down, but the article doesn't say :(
Well, given what we know about most commercial plastics, which are all derived from oil/complex hydrocarbons, the consumed plastic could be broken down into condensed carbon? Or would it be carbon gases? I'm speculating based on just what I know about plastics, what they are and how they're made.
The fungi are likely oxidizing the plastic to CO2, probably via many metabolic intermediates. This is likely driven by the fact that plastics are chemically reduced - a rich source of chemical potential energy. Accessing that energy requires enzymatic conversion to a less reduced state, culminating in the fully oxidized CO2 molecule.
I've heard living organisms tend to output carbondioxide
Like good news right but also fuck my life
If I recall correctly, the Andromeda Strain mutated into a form that ate plastic.
Came here for this GIF, thank you for having it ready.
Both books written by Michael Crichton so very fitting.
Before he went full-on raging anti-climate change nut.
This may all SEEM fine & dandy, but..
The such ocean gyres, if I'm remembering what they're called correctly, had a normal, established-for-millions-of-years kind-of-ecology in them..
NOW, however, we're forcing that this fungus become a dominant-player in them..
WHAT DOES THAT FUNGUS DO TO THE OTHER ORGANISMS IN THAT ECOLOGY?
( people may remember some years ago when the Purple Loostrife we imported was killing all our North American marshes, turning them into thickets of woody stems/runners/etc, & each individual plant could put out 50,000 seeds per year...
So, the Canadian Gov't did test after test after test, & finally resolved that a .. Chinese, iirc, ladybird bug ate the stuff, but didn't eat any other plants..
so, they imported them & let them loose..
You know those new orange ladybird bugs?
the ones that bite animals?
Those are the ones, ttbomk.
They don't eat any other plants, other than purple loostrife, but their habit of biting us means that carnivorism is normal in them, and .. how does that affect the ecology??
You can't just arbitrarily alter ecologies & responsibly expect them to remain functionally-balanced, & in-harmony: consequences tend to multiply each-other, & tipping-points do get crossed. )
_ /\ _
The ecology changes until a new balance is reached. People can be a bit overly fatalist about these realities. Its not like we've never witnessed an ecology change before.
But the more carbon we put into the atmosphere, the more this tiger-by-the-tail we've got called Climate Change is worked up. Bad news if your civilization craves stability.