Beneath the ocean’s surface, bacteria have evolved specialized enzymes that can digest PET plastic, the material used in bottles and clothes. Researchers at KAUST discovered that a unique molecular signature distinguishes enzymes capable of efficiently breaking down plastic. Found in nearly 80% of ocean samples, these PETase variants show nature’s growing adaptation to human pollution.
Has anyone considered the flip side of this. if we are unintentionally creating a bacteria that eats plastic, and our civilization is made of plastic, then this is a bad thing. Hospital equipment, airplanes, computers food storage, electrical wires…
Don’t get me wrong, I think we should end all plastic use. but in a controlled way, not with a plastic eating plague.
Kind of, but there are plenty of paper and wood decomposers and we still use plenty of those. It will have consequences but you already have to service vehicles and you already need to sanitise hospital equipment
There are plenty of wood eating bacteria and fungus all around you and yet wooden buildings still exists.
These microorganisms need a favourable environment to start digesting wood, for example. That’s why you can stack firewood outside without it being decomposed, but leave a tree out in the mud and it gets eaten.
There are exceptions, something like Serpula lacrymans, can bring down whole buildings, but even there the wood needs to be humid enough for it to be attacked by this fungus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serpula_lacrymans
To be fair, this has happened before, and I understand it was far hard for the bacteria then.
There was a time when cellulose could not be broken down. Trees fell and piled up for … miles? Anyway, then bacteria figured out how to break it down. (We also got coal from the trees that were burred.) Anyway, we still build out of cellulose. Sometimes we treat the cellulose, sometimes we don’t.
Plastic may, or may not, end up the same way.
I don’t think bacteria can stop Big Oil from pumping oil to make plastic and Big Plastic from making consumer things.
When the plastic eating bacteria starts endangering the existence of artificial consciousness in the machine, life on earth will be purposefully wiped out.