Oh no, my balls
Bunch of people in Hollywood getting really nervous right now.
yo thats unironically based. we need that.
What does it excrete? I’m curious.
Edit: The bacterium will eventually convert the plastic into carbon dioxide and water. That’s both expected and somewhat disappointing.
You'd prefer they excreted gasoline and matches?
what the plastic is made of. so any molecule that contains C, H (and atoms like O and S F or N depending on the type of plastic) can be synthesized by plastic eating bacteria. so we can also make oil and fuel from it
The article states it’s ingesting Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET), (C10H8O4)n
Metabolism is just fire but slower IIRC
True, but it also depends on the enzymes capabilities to break things down into their smallest components.
This is so great and so bad at the same time. We're gonna have to go back to using tar and shit for things we actually want to last. That's not going to be cheap...
Tar is very problematic health-wise. Banned in some countries for this reason.
I mean, wood already biodegrades quite readily, yet we are able to make some pretty long lasting things out of it anyway. Having a bacteria that can break down some variety of plastic doesn't really imply that all plastic things are going to rot away like old fruit.
We also cover wood in hydrocarbons to stop it from being broken down, if a bacteria can break down long hydrocarbon chains we are kind of fucked
Aren't all humans full of microplastics?
Not just humans, IIRC micro plastics can be found in the most remote parts of the planet such as uninhabited areas of Antarctica.
Everything is, it has saturated the water cycle and is everywhere the water cycle reaches. (water cycle reaches everywhere)
Arm the site nuke https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Andromeda_Strain
If we play our cards right, we could have a real-life Andromeda Strain.
