cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/16488358
Scientists Find Plastic-Eating Fungus Feasting on Great Pacific Garbage Patch
Sounds like great news, no?
Just as we had a time before fungus digesting plant matter, we’ve now had a time before fungus digesting plastics.
“Soon” we’ll get bacteria and insects doing the same, and all our plastic buildings will need to be protected just as the wood ones.
Not really good news for the plastic that isnt waste. Plastic pipes or structures in buildings that were meant to last decades we dont want eaten away by fungus
Still it’s a positive net balance for the planet if it happens this way. But I think the “plastic safety” (in a food sense) would also end?
For earth and the surviving creatures on it this is probably great news, but this is probably going to be a problem for humans in the short term. Plastic is this magic material that is immune to degradation and microbes, now that is no longer the case.
Ultimately that will be a good thing, but think about sanitized plastic medical equipment, now it can slowly be eaten up by microbes that we didn’t have to worry about before.
“Nature finds a way” – Dr. Ian Malcolm
The plastic simply was a too nice of an energy source to be left aside by microorganisms. There are microorganisms for basically any energy source the world provides. There are bacteria that live on undersea volcanoes feasting on acids and carbon dioxide, so a fungus eating plastic is no actual surprise.
Unless you include the “uh” in that quote I can’t hear Jeff Goldblum say it, and that’s a trigger I didn’t know it had. So, thanks?
“…at a rate of roughly 0.05 percent per day … would take a very long time” … but by my quick calculation 0.9995^3650 is 84% per decade, which is not long. Almost instantaneous on a geological timescale - and think how much the world changed when fungi learned how to digest lignin in wood - ending the era of coal-forming swamps.
It’s going to be a significantly different number than that. You have to factor in growth rate in a resource-abundant environment as well as reduced access to food sources as more of the patch is consumed. But yeah, you’re right that’s actually a very fast rate of consumption of a non-naturally-renewing food source.
I can’t tell if it’s a good news or bad news.
Assuming it doesn’t evolve the ability to digest human flesh after it eats all the plastic, I think this is great news.
An interesting scifi plot could be where said fungi start hungering for the microplastics within us…
I would really like to know what’s the resulting materials after the breaking down, but the article doesn’t say :(
Well, given what we know about most commercial plastics, which are all derived from oil/complex hydrocarbons, the consumed plastic could be broken down into condensed carbon? Or would it be carbon gases? I’m speculating based on just what I know about plastics, what they are and how they’re made.
The fungi are likely oxidizing the plastic to CO2, probably via many metabolic intermediates. This is likely driven by the fact that plastics are chemically reduced - a rich source of chemical potential energy. Accessing that energy requires enzymatic conversion to a less reduced state, culminating in the fully oxidized CO2 molecule.
