We humans are good at finding solutions to a lot of things and when we do, we call them innovations but there are a lot of innovations that end up becoming a problem to us over time and one of these innovations was the development of plastics. In the past, plastic was the the saving grace for us. It was useful in helping us carry luggage, packing, and almost everything you can think of but today, we see signs of Plastics not allowed and we preach a lot about the negative effect on the one time favorite.
Made out of long chains of polymers with strong bonds, its problem ranging from not breaking down quickly thereby polluting the environment including land, sea, and air to getting into the digestive systems of animals leading to their death and now to the digestive systems of humans. It has gotten a terrible name and everyone is looking to just one thing which is seeing it gone but that won't happen immediately.
Breaking these bonds require oxidation but when left in the environment, it can take a while for this to happen but researchers are working on wax worms which was first noticed by Dr. Federica Bertocchini who placed wax worms in a plastic only to learn that the plastics began to degrade upon touching the mouth of the worms. This got the attention of researchers and they decided to look into this worm that spends it entire larva period eating only to molt and reproduce after since it doesn't eat all through its life after molten into moths.
The saliva from the worms were collected and two enzymes Demeter and Ceres were found and they were oxydising polyethylene. These breaks down the plastic to become food for the worms. The worms appear to breaking down the plastic through oxidation where oxygen molecules is introduced into the plastic and in hours instead of years, the plastic degrades.
Why we could advise that the worms be released into the wild, how many worms would be needed to clear out the entire plastic in the world, probably thousands of trillions of them which means we might even have wax worms walking over our bodies in no time. Moreover, the process of the degradation is still quite slow and finally, the worm is bad news for bee keepers.
What about the enzymes in the mouth of the worm? If this enzymes can be identified and scaled up quickly, then we can look at other factors before saying if it is a good idea or a bad one. Different worms have been looked into and over 30,000 enzymes have been identified to degrade and digest about 10 types of plastics. Actually worms aren't the only thing being looked at, other organisms like bacteria are being looked at. A bacteria Nora belblidia in cow stomach has been seen to be good at digesting polyester. Another bacteria called Ideonella Sakaienesis which releases the enzyme Petase is one of importance since it can break down PET which is the majority of the plastic that has become a menace to our environment.
With petase, PET plastic that would take years to be broken down gets broken down in days but days is too long for the result we need so researchers are working on modifying the enzyme to see that it can perform its action faster and they have named their result FAST-PETase. They are able to achieve this using artificial intelligence to simulate which combinations will speed up the reaction when combined with PETase. While they are working on this currently, there is still more work to be done and the researchers are looking at recycling the component parts Terapthalic acid and Ethylene glycol to plastic again or other things like Vanillin used to make vanilla.
Another set of researchers were able to turn plastic into vanillin via E-coli. So if all this works, you might be consuming that delicious ice cream but in reality it is just plastic that was degraded. Before you start to say you cannot eat such if or when it eventually becomes successful, then you might have to think deep to why you can consume vanilla gotten from hydrocarbon which is the same we use in fuel but cannot consume the one gotten from bacteria. Until then, we have our hands crossed and we wait for whatever results that comes from it.
Reference
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4360/15/7/1779
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9668955/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-33127-w
https://www.weforum.org/stories/2021/07/microbes-plastics-environment-animals-cows-biology/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04599-z
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.3c04427
https://www.innovationnewsnetwork.com/using-e-coli-to-convert-plastic-pollution-into-vanilla-flavouring/12511/
https://www.brandonu.ca/research-connection/article/how-waxworms-eat-plastic/
https://edu.rsc.org/science-research/how-microbes-convert-waste-plastic-bottles-into-vanillin/4013882.article
https://www.europeanscientist.com/en/environment/turning-plastic-into-vanilla/
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