Bacteria found to eat PET plastics could help do the recycling

[Lance]

NATURE has beaten us to it again. A bacterium that breaks down and consumes one of the world’s most problematic pollutants has turned up, living off plastic debris.

Kohei Oda of the Kyoto Institute of Technology in Japan and his team found Ideonella sakaiensis by analysing microbes on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) samples from the environment. They hope this will lead to new ways to dispose of plastic, using either the bacteria themselves or the two enzymes they produce for the job (Science, doi.org/bc8g).

“Large quantities of PET have accumulated in environments across the globe,” says Oda. His team is now trying to engineer a bacterial strain that is even better at gobbling it.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2080666-bacteria-found-to-eat-pet-plastics-could-help-do-the-recycling/