Engineered yeast for converting plastic and biomass compounds into food

eehwa37 about 5 hours ago 29 commentsRead Article on acs.digitellinc.com

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spockz•about 4 hours ago

Maybe the only thing more worrisome than microplastics everywhere is unstoppable plastics eating organisms everywhere, eating through all plastics everywhere.

ch4s3•about 3 hours ago

Usually these bioengineered yeasts need pretty specific growth conditions in order to eat in this case ethylene glycol, not raw finished plastic. In this case they say "plastic-derived substrates" which means they're pre-processing the waste plastic.

cortesoft•about 3 hours ago

Good thing microorganisms are famous for their slow rate of change in dynamic environments…

ch4s3•about 2 hours ago

I'm not sure what this adds. The yeast here is chomping ethylene glycol for carbon, and tons of soil bacteria can already do that. And I should add that highly specialized industrial/lab yeasts have existed for a long time and aren't prevalent in the environment, they just don't like to grow outside of narrow(ish) conditions. Highly prevalent wild yeasts tend to eat a variety of sugars, not glycol.

tantalor•21 minutes ago

Of course, the lysine contingency.

ryanisnan•about 3 hours ago

Reminds me of the Taumoeba escaping the Xenonite enclosures.

fc417fc802•about 3 hours ago

Perhaps soon you'll be needing to apply stains or sealants to your outdoor plastic items. Maybe even purchase treated plastic products that we worry leach toxic chemicals into their surroundings.

masklinn•about 2 hours ago

Timescale is the important bit. If organisms degrade plastics in a few hundred years then what plastics are uniquely valuable for will be quite fine indeed.

simmerup•about 2 hours ago

Why is that worrisome? Might give the fish a chance whose bellies are filling up with plastic rubbish

serf•about 2 hours ago

for all the reasons in the book/movie/television show 'The Andromeda Strain'.

piloto_ciego•about 4 hours ago

There’s a fantastically silly but fun book about this the name of which eludes me.

stevekemp•about 2 hours ago

Mutant 59: The Plastic Eaters, a 1971 British sci-fi environmental disaster novel written by medical scientist Kit Pedler and television screenwriter Gerry Davis.

No wikipedia page, but goodreads has it here:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/99852816-mutant-59

piloto_ciego•about 2 hours ago

That wasn’t it; I just found it, it’s called Ill Wind by Kevin J Anderson

mocheeze•about 3 hours ago

Not plastic, but 'Cats Cradle' by Kurt Vonnegut has something kind of like that.

righthand•about 2 hours ago

Such as in The Andromeda Strain?

weaksauce•about 2 hours ago

there was a time in history before fungus came along and ate trees so there were just a huge amount of trees around that couldn't decay. (which is why we have coal actually) this could be something akin to that.

mbil•about 4 hours ago

If you don't eat your biomass compound goo, you can't have any PlastiYum bacterial sludge

waschl•about 4 hours ago

Is there any of this ”bacteria converting plastic to fuel/food/neutral stuff“ actually applied anywhere at scale under economically reasonably conditions?

ninalanyon•about 4 hours ago

There was a Doomwatch episode on his subject with airliners falling out of the sky bcause all the plastic had been eaten away.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomwatch#Series_One

Jaauthor•about 3 hours ago

Didn't that happen in Andromeda Strain? The de-polymerized polymer?

stevekemp•about 2 hours ago

And that episode was stretched out into a novel which I linked to above - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/99852816-mutant-59

thisisauserid•about 3 hours ago

In 2011 researchers identified a fungus named pestalotiopsis microspora. It gained widespread attention because it can digest polyurethane plastic and survive entirely in anaerobic conditions, making it a prime candidate for deployment at the bottom of landfills.

I for one look forward to serving this underground deity.

metalman•about 1 hour ago

soilent goo, again!

you, yes you, area "biomass compound", well maybe not quite yet, but soon, as these things go, but most definitly every last putrid smelly horrible thing is a "biomass compound", and when you add in plastic we are talking about most of the stuff found in millions of dumpsters, and most of the stuff actualy in dumps, or sewers.

This then solves the whole issue of what is allowed to go in which can or bin, which is anything you cant get money for or find someone who will hall it away for free.

I am very very sure that volunteers will soon show up wishing to "return to the great nutrient cycle"

but there is nothing to worry about as I am positive that everything will be tested and cynicly proven to be safe for human consumption

hkt•about 3 hours ago

Honestly at this point I think the way to go may be to stop using plastics where they're not absolutely required, and to subsequently burn what goes into landfill while producing electricity and reclaiming heat. Better that than this.

fc417fc802•about 3 hours ago

Burn it? With all the talk of carbon capture? Recall that plastic literally consists of a mass of hydrocarbons. Why not bury it?

axus•about 1 hour ago

I think the legitimate answer was groundwater contamination, but that should be solved for other things we bury. I'm on board for non-biodegradable plastic trash sequestration

Loughla•about 1 hour ago

How do you define 'not absolutely required'?

itsrobreally•about 4 hours ago

And here I thought we were going to be fed insects when we hit final-stage capitalism

Jaauthor•about 3 hours ago

you are ... plastic insects.