Bacteria with a taste for plastic could reduce our waste problem
Scientists have discovered and helped nudge a handful of microbes that can break certain plastics down to their component molecules to potentially create an efficient method of recycling. While these microbes have been known to degrade flimsy plastics since the early 1990s, a new microbe has been discovered in Japan that not only grows on long-lasting polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastics but could use PET as its main source of nutrients. Read about the bacterium and how scientists have been able to improve the enzyme used to break down plastics.
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