Scientists Accidentally Create Mutant Enzyme That Eats Plastic Bottles (theguardian.com) 219
Scientists have created a mutant enzyme that breaks down plastic drinks bottles -- by accident. The breakthrough could help solve the global plastic pollution crisis by enabling for the first time the full recycling of bottles. From a report: 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. The international team then tweaked the enzyme to see how it had evolved, but tests showed they had inadvertently made the molecule even better at breaking down the PET (polyethylene terephthalate) plastic used for soft drink bottles. "What actually turned out was we improved the enzyme, which was a bit of a shock," said Prof John McGeehan, at the University of Portsmouth, UK, who led the research. "It's great and a real finding." The mutant enzyme takes a few days to start breaking down the plastic -- far faster than the centuries it takes in the oceans. But the researchers are optimistic this can be speeded up even further and become a viable large-scale process.
Can't wait for this to get loose (Score:5, Insightful)
If it gets loose, will it eat the bottles on the shelves? Will it also eat the fleece jackets made from recycled PET bottles?
Re:Can't wait for this to get loose (Score:5, Informative)
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http://www.imdb.com/title/tt00... [imdb.com]
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Oh man, I haven't seen that movie in ages. That would be a much better movie for a remake than all the insipid crap Hollywood has been recycling for the last three decades.
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Oh man, I haven't seen that movie in ages. That would be a much better movie for a remake than all the insipid crap Hollywood
....and yet, it wasn't (in my opinion) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt04 [imdb.com]... [imdb.com]
Thx for the link. I lost track of the remake after hearing one rumor. Never bothered to follow up. At least it had Viola Davis. Was it any good? If not, you can't blame Michael Crichton.
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NOTE: That first link doesn't actually go to Goatse, but it begins down that path with suitable warnings. "Shock sites are what make the internet fun." I suggest that you NOT go there but watch The Andromeda Strain. Really. It's probably on YT -- isn't everything? If not, I'm sure it'll
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... Or anything else synthetic?
Trump's hair?
Re:Can't wait for this to get loose (Score:5, Funny)
Scientists have created a mutant enzyme,
I'm pretty sure this is how a zombie apocalypse starts.
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yep, and out of control it will start attacking artificial heart valves, stints, IUDs and just about every other non-junk application of plastics. Now it will just take some other scientist to make some bacteria that secretes this enzyme as a bi-product.
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Its not a question of IF it will get loose, its a question of WHEN, and whether we'll be able to deal with it, or will it mutate to a point where we are all just grey goo.
Re: Can't wait for this to get loose (Score:5, Insightful)
Losing plastic would still be worth it.
Not really. We as a society are extremely dependent on this stuff. We use it for just about everything, from cars and machinery, to furnishings and toys, right down to medical tubing and syringes. We need our plastic, we don't have anything lined up to take its place in the modern world.
What we don't need is "disposable" plastic containers, these were an awful idea. Let's go back to glass. Sure it's heavier, but we can recycle it much easier and it's not such an annoyance in the wild.
If people would just use their brains, we could eliminate so much plastic waste. We've gone way off the deep-end with putting everything in "disposable" plastic containers.
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Of course, most of those "disposable" plastic containers would be trivially recyclable if there weren't laws forbidding recycling of things that had been in contact with...food....
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Many countries don't have such laws and still have an incredible problem with recycling. Convenience trumps recycling every time, and it's hard to beat the convenience of littering let alone throwing something into the first garbage bin you see.
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What you need is flexible glass. Glass that is soft at room temperature and melts easily with anything above 100C
Re: Can't wait for this to get loose (Score:5, Informative)
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And if one of its products is something edible by bacteria? And the bacteria figure out how to use it! Imagine the damage to the fancy water industry! And the toy soldiers! Noooooo!
Re:Can't wait for this to get loose (Score:5, Insightful)
As to the bacteria getting loose, they found it in a dump so it is loose already...
Re: Can't wait for this to get loose (Score:2)
There are thousands of bacteria in millions of dumps working on the same problem right now, not to mention all their relatives in the oceans. Who knows what they'll come up with?
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Gentlemen, start your chainsaws!
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No one bothered to link the paper, which is a PDF here:
http://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/early/2018/04/16/1718804115.full.pdf [pnas.org]
The story did mention that the enzyme was not optimized (do to young age of the whole process no doubt) and suggested a transplant of the mutant enzyme into an “extremophile bacteria” for a greater range of temperature resistance... I can
Re:Can't wait for this to get loose (Score:4, Funny)
It's fun to imagine the mayhem if it also eats vinyl
Hipsters sobbing as their precious record collections turn to grey goo and they have to start downloading music again, like Walmart shoppers.
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Re:Can't wait for this to get loose (Score:5, Informative)
If the enzyme gets loose? You do know what an enzyme is, don't you?
The bacteria which produced the precursor is already loose--it was a naturally occurring beast. Just how dangerous it is remains to be seen. It's worth worrying about.
But this new enzyme? It's true that enzymes aren't destroyed by their processes--that's one of their defining features--but they also don't move by themselves, so they're not going to "eat" anything they're not actively placed on. Nor do they reproduce. I think we're pretty safe.
I mean, sulfuric acid will also eat many plastics. Do you worry about sulfuric acid "getting loose" and eating your fleece jacket?
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so they're not going to "eat" anything they're not actively placed on. Nor do they reproduce. I think we're pretty safe.
Right up until someone slips the enzyme into the de-icing spray at the airport... ;-)
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They could do the same thing with H2SO4, which is a whole lot cheaper, and isn't limited to affecting PETs. I don't see why one is a worry and the other not.
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It could very well get loose.
The issue is with how the mutant enzyme is made. I must note that I have not been able to find the paper this article was about(link in article does not work), but it is quite likely that they made their mutant enzyme by modifying the DNA sequence of original enzyme and putting that into some microorganism. The enzyme itself does not replicate, but the microorganism they used to make sufficient quantities of enzyme does. That could escape.
Whether this is an issue is another prob
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Do you worry about sulfuric acid "getting loose" and eating your fleece jacket?
Well i wasn't until NOW!!! Thanks!!!111!!!!
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Ah, you do know that it's an enzyme from an Asian bacterium, don't you?
Of course, we all know in our bones that somehow those Asian bacteria have a biological copy shop for anything out there in the world they want to make their own.
How has this escaped notice by our microbiologists so far? Good question. I'm glad you asked.
Well, we haven't noticed the bacterial copy shop capability yet, because the blueprint is usually available (the origin
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Re: Can't wait for this to get loose (Score:2)
Doctor evil makes a trillion tonnes of it and sprays it into the upper atmosphere tontain down.
Slashdotâ(TM)s readership is clearly entering the crazy reactionary geezer phase of life.
Re:Can't wait for this to get loose (Score:4, Funny)
My shiny, expensive LEGO collection!?! =-O
KILL IT WITH FIRE!
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If it gets loose, will it eat the bottles on the shelves? Will it also eat the fleece jackets made from recycled PET bottles?
I read that book a long time ago:
Mutant 59: The Plastic-Eaters [amazon.com]
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This reminds me of the bacterium designed to break down the room temperature superconductors used on the Ringworld by the Puppeteers to eliminate the threat that they believed the inhabitants of the Ringworld posed to them. I hope that the tech people involved are smart enough to make sure the enzyme is controllable so that it only eats up waste plastics. Too much of our society is plastic-based at this point.
For the edification of those who don't recognize the reference, http://www.larryniven.net/puppet [larryniven.net]
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Do rubber tires or hosepipes or e.g. gasoline tubes count as "plastic"?
No, rubber is not PET.
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If it prevents rugrats, rubber might be an anti-PET.
There is surely no way this can go wrong (Score:2, Informative)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2368220.Mutant_59
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"Mutant 59: The Plastic Eaters". I thought it was by Michael Crichton, but apparently not.
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Re:There is surely no way this can go wrong (Score:5, Informative)
"Mutant 59: The Plastic Eaters". I thought it was by Michael Crichton, but apparently not.
The book [amazon.com] is by Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis from 1972. I've read it and it's pretty good (for its time, anyway) -- things do *not* go well in the world, remember that electrical wiring is insulated with plastic. I usually reference this whenever something like this comes up, but you beat me to it.
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Or someone could write about an engineered plague destroying room-temperature superconductors.
(Larry Niven did it.)
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The scary thing will be when... (Score:4, Funny)
Plastics evolve antibodies to fight off plastic-eating bacteria.
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Then they'll spray this enzyme indiscriminately, killing off all the other plastics until the more highly evolved plastics are the only ones left. After that, they are coming for you and me, brother!
One question (Score:5, Interesting)
Does the enzyme release CO2, (or any other greenhouse gases), while it's breaking down the plastic?
Re:One question (Score:4, Informative)
Re:One question (Score:5, Informative)
From the wiki article on "deicing fluid" [wikipedia.org]:
Airports that use this stuff are required to have capture processes to keep this from the ground water. It doesn't sound so environmentally benign to me. The only reasons these two precursors are less dangerous is because they aren't lumps of (previously thought) poorly-bio-degradable plastic.
I was also going to point to Mutant 59: The Plastic Eaters, but someone beat me to it.
Re:One question (Score:5, Informative)
Most airports (at least those I've done work for) don't do anything special to contain the runoff from deicing, other than to not discharge it to storm sewers leading to rivers and lakes.
Also, airports don't use ethylene glycol, they use propylene glycol for deicing. (For anti-icing, they use propylene glycol-based fluids modified to have high viscosity at low shear rates and low viscosity at high shear rates: that way it stays on the wings until the plane gets near takeoff speed.)
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Dogs and children will lap the stuff up if they encounter a spill [...]
My child must be bit different then - she is not lapping puddles of random stuff near waste recycling plants in hope it might be sweet.
Maybe this is more dangerous for children raised on the progressive, 'no-sweets' diet? Are they desperate enough to lap everything looking for sweets?
Re:One question (Score:4, Informative)
If you consider that PET is comprised solely of hydrogen, carbon and oxygen, then yes, it probably does.
Like anything that breaks down hydrocarbons. Including you when you breathe.
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If so, they could pump that waste CO2 into biodiesel reactors. Plastic to fuel!
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Lol. Another pruitt botslave. Yeah, CO2 is not a big threat to the planet, as long as you don't care about human survival.
On the contrary. According to Pruitt, CO2 is not a consequence of human activity, whereas I explicitly say people don't care enough to do something, implying that they have an influence. Moreover, *any* of these things is only a problem insofar as one cares about humans. The point you don't seem to be getting is that -at least in principle- fixing CO2 is easy. Just stop using coal fired plants etc. I am very interested to hear your solution -even just theoretically- to remove (micro-)plastics from the envir
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No, the only byproduct is plutonium.
Invented by accident.. (Score:2)
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penicillin
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How many inventions were the result of accidents? Microwave ovens? Telephone?
Windows 10
This is the precursor (Score:2)
This is the precursor to the great plastic plague of 2020
Wrong... (Score:2)
So the churches have been wrong all along. The end of things won't be a fiery death but everything dissolving into the classical grey goo syndrome. Imagine if this got loose in a hospital, all the tubes and plastic based equipment dissolving around the patients and doctors.
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Somehow hospitals have survived the existence of enzymes that eat flesh without the patients and staff all turning to goo. The wooden parts of the buildings have managed not to turn to goo despite wood eating enzymes existing.
Enzyme + PET = (Score:2)
Enzyme + PET equals what exactly? Surely not nothing. Hopefully something harmless.
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PET is a hydrocarbon so you get H2O and CO2
A new weapon.. (Score:2)
I can see endless military applications.
This is fantastic! (Score:5, Insightful)
I knew nature was going to catch on eventually (long before the "thousands of years to decay" prediction) and I'm glad it has. Plastics are nice but the half-life of the products they are used in are astonishingly short. My hope is that we will be able to spray trash with a variety of monocelluar critters and it will turn it into various gases that can be harvested and used for something else. Once they have done their job, they'll leave a biosludge and elemental components like metals that can be reclaimed. The sludge will make a great fertilizer.
I hope people realize this is a good thing rather than flailing nonsensically about how their iphone is going to fall apart.
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This sounds like the blurb you get at the start of a marvel comic, before things go horribly wrong.
Kill it now! (Score:2)
Do people really not know what "enzyme" means? (Score:5, Informative)
I think some people are being confused by the use of the term "mutant" in the headline. This is not a creature. It doesn't reproduce. It's a chemical. You can worry about spills, but it's never going to be a plague.
The bacteria it was derived from might become a plague, but that's an already-existing worry, since it's a naturally occurring critter which is already out there in the wild. But this is just stuff. If it "gets loose", it'll just sit there. At worst, it might contaminate the groundwater or something, but that's true of a lot of other chemicals.
Why not (Score:2)
Why not just burn all that shit? No silly enzymes or science required.
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Why not just burn all that shit? No silly enzymes or science required.
The reason they don't just "burn all that shit" is that they are interested in a way to break down the PET back to it's polymer pre-cursors so they can repolymerize it back into plastic again to improve recycling. By recovering the original pre-cursors, they can more effectively recycle the plastic.
The current recycle flow for PET is a bit costly to produce back food-grade plastic (vs simply using virgin material) because of the use of dye, color sorting is required before melting, so often PET is open-loo
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"...even today we don't "burn all that shit", we open-loop recycle"
Nope. I burn it. It sounds dangerous but it isn't. So long as you squish all that shit into the holes in the middle of old tires it is easy to arrange and position as you like. If it's not too windy you can even move it while it's still burning. And when all you have left is some steel wire loops and sticky residue you just flip it up and roll it into the river. Gravity is free and also fully eco.
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So ship it to China or Pakistan and burn it there.
Some plastic should last a long time (Score:2)
For example, electric wire insulation... I'm assuming this bacteria will go pretty slowly, not having a negative impact on all the disposable stuff we go through. However, there are lots of plastic uses that are expected to maintain their integrity for decades, in places that can't/won't be checked or replaced.
Will it dissolve PET rocks? (Score:4, Funny)
Sorry, not sorry for exploiting low hanging fruit.
What's the resulting soup? (Score:2)
“What we are hoping to do is use this enzyme to turn this plastic back into its original components, so we can literally recycle it back to plastic,” said McGeehan
That's currently a wish. What are the current byproducts, are they toxic and can they be economically reprocessed into something? The key word here is "economically". It it costs less, then any downside with health or environmental issues take a backseat.
Ob. IFO / WCP (Score:2)
I for one would like to welcome our plastic munching Enzyme accidental Overlords. What could possibly go wrong?
Can it break down bottles (Score:2)
Better than fire?
Excreations (Score:2)
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“What we are hoping to do is use this enzyme to turn this plastic back into its original components, so we can literally recycle it back to plastic,” said McGeehan. “It means we won’t need to dig up any more oil and, fundamentally, it should reduce the amount of plastic in the environment.”
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Actually, the traditional (and now very out-of-date) wisdom is that "speeded" should only be used with "up". So your complaint would be silly even if we did still subscribe to thy 19th century grammatical peeves. Forsooth!
http://grammarist.com/usage/sp... [grammarist.com]
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It would be really daft to make a ship's hull out of PET - but "sailcloth is typically made from PET fibers also known as polyester or under the brand name Dacron"... be interesting when you have to buy a new sail just the old one was eaten.
But, yes, that is a concern, especially seeing as this enzyme was borrowed from a bacterium that evolved it naturally. It won't be long before another does the same, or this one gets into the wild.
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It has to be said... of all the things to moan about, this is the most minor.
Buy sturdy bags. Don't have a problem. Or do what I did for most of my childhood, and which I've seen practised all over the world, most recently in rural Italian stores... which is grab the big cardboard boxes from the back of the store (they used to just have a big area laid out that they put empty packaging into), use those to pack your shopping into for the brief periods of a) putting into your car, b) taking out of your car
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I'm probably much older than the usual denizens of this site and I remember the detergent scare of the 1950's. Basically detergents (Tide was the number one brand) contaminated local streams and rivers and did not readily decompose. A few years later Tide changed its formula and the problem disappeared. The bottom line is that problems caused by technology have technological fixes.
I remember when a novel solution to excess Tide was popularized on the Internet a few weeks ago. It has the wonderful side-effect of population control by self-(de)-selection!
(Here I am assuming that the Tide Pod Challenge is not at the root of the "accidental" creation of mutant plastic-munching Enzyme Overlords...)
Re: Fucking Citation Needed (Score:2)
That's because the tidal range is huge in that area. The reason plastics break down so quickly is due to abrasion with the boats, moorings, sand, etc, which is exacerbated by the strong tidal flows. We're taking about the plastics breaking down naturally which - as demonstrated by photos of seas full of plastic - *is* slow.
Unless you're suggesting that we dump all our plastic waste in the English channel. It won't affect me as I live near the furthest point from the coast. /s
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The linked article says nothing about biodegradation. Biodegradation means that a material breaks down into things like CO2, water and minerals. In this case the plastics decompose into styrene trimer and bisphenol-A, these are nasty pollutants known to harm reproduction and cause cancer. So no, plastics do not biodegrade in the sea, and yes, I'd definitely prefer using these enzymes to recycle these plastics rather than dumping them in landfills and oceans.
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Webster's defines biodegradable as "capable of being broken down especially into innocuous products by the action of living things (such as microorganisms)". The product of plastics decomposing in the sea is definitely not innocuous (harmless), and the National Geographic article says nothing about how the plastics decompose in the ocean (bacteria? corrosion by the salt water?) so neither of us can be sure that it fits either the Webster's or the Wikipedia definition. In any case calling this breakdown of p