Canadian teen discovers plastic bag devouring microbe
Friday May 23, 2008 3:51 pm
Source: CS Monitor/Bright Green Blog
Author: Eoin O\'Carroll
Published: http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/...ouring-microbe/
As part of a science fair project, a Canadian teenager has come up with a way to get plastic shopping bags, which normally take up to 1,000 years to decompose, to break down in as little as three months.
Daniel Burd, a 16-year-old high school student in Waterloo, Canada, reasoned that, because plastic eventually degrades, there is probably some some microorganism out there that breaks it down. If that microbe could be identified, you could expose higher concentrations of it to plastic and break it down faster.
So Mr. Burd did just that. The Waterloo Region Record explains his experiment:
First, he ground plastic bags into a powder. Next, he used ordinary household chemicals, yeast and tap water to create a solution that would encourage microbe growth. To that, he added the plastic powder and dirt. Then the solution sat in a shaker at 30 degrees.
After three months of upping the concentration of plastic-eating microbes, Burd filtered out the remaining plastic powder and put his bacterial culture into three flasks with strips of plastic cut from grocery bags. As a control, he also added plastic to flasks containing boiled and therefore dead bacterial culture.
Six weeks later, he weighed the strips of plastic. The control strips were the same. But the ones that had been in the live bacterial culture weighed an average of 17 percent less.
Burd then went on to identify which one of the four bacterial strains in the culture was the one with the appetite for plastic. He identified two: Sphingomonas and Pseudomonas. The first one breaks down the plastic, and the second one helps the first one reproduce.
After some experimentation, he was able to get a plastic bag to degrade by 43 percent in six weeks. His six-page report, which you can download here (PDF), concludes that the process he developed could be used on an industrial scale.
Full Version: Canadian Teen discovers plastic-eating microb
This sounds absoloutely brilliant. If it's a major success I see great things for the guy... 
Without going to read the entire thing, the important part is, what chemicals do this microbe release in the process? Obviously in nature this microbe is very RARE. Growing mass quantities of it to devour plastic could POTENTIALLY be even more devistating to the ecology than the plastic bag itself, depending what transformation occurs... ask anyone in Georgia about Kudzo....
Wow, people were saying it would take many more years for microbs to develop that could break down plastic like this.
Lets just hope there's no risk of having a giant plastic based monster glob attacking NY... again..
Lets just hope there's no risk of having a giant plastic based monster glob attacking NY... again..
i don't think they would do an experiment like this without evaluating all possibilities. This is amazing to me. What a smart young man. The fact that it could potentialy cut down on nonbiodegratable products, or products that take an extremely long time, is great. We could use a lot more people with his type of goals...
Wow now this is interesting! He used his spare time wisely
He used his spare time wisely
I wonder if there any potential side effects of mass producing this microbe? It ain't nice to fool with mother nature. 
QUOTE (Promethius @ May 24 2008, 06:38 PM) 
This sounds absoloutely brilliant. If it's a major success I see great things for the guy...
Just wonderful what young minds can create. Hopefully he will patent it and make lots of money on it.
That's pretty amazing. Smart kid.
Wow, the minds of the young. Amazing
Pft.
Nerd.
Nerd.
A brilliant kid!!! 
Hmmm!! 
..on the dark side though....
If Monsanto bought the patent we'd soon have a plastic eating super bug that would eat up protective plastic coatings on wires...and be a potential new mould that could deteriate the million and one plastic products we have in our everyday lives....
This is like the radioactive waste eating funghi discovered in England starting a Bioremediation industry
This is the scary bit......
...
http://photoscience.la.asu.edu/photosyn/co...e/bioremed.html
http://www.nonukes.org/r09bior.htm
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/lon...98721.html?c=on
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3313181.stm
Hmmm!! ..on the dark side though....If Monsanto bought the patent we'd soon have a plastic eating super bug that would eat up protective plastic coatings on wires...and be a potential new mould that could deteriate the million and one plastic products we have in our everyday lives....
This is like the radioactive waste eating funghi discovered in England starting a Bioremediation industry
QUOTE
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/175015_bugs26.html
Bacteria found in Hanford waste
Scientists studying the soil beneath a leaking Hanford nuclear waste storage tank have discovered more than 100 species of bacteria living in a toxic, radioactive environment that most would have thought inhospitable to all forms of life.
"Even in some of the most contaminated zones, we found a few living organisms," said Fred Brockman, a microbial ecologist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland. Brockman is presenting the findings today at the American Society for Microbiology's annual meeting in New Orleans.
For most living creatures, the nuclear and chemical waste in the underground storage tanks on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation is the deadliest mixture of toxins and radioactive muck on the planet.
For certain bacteria, however, this toxic goop left over from decades of nuclear weapons production appears to be just a second home.
"Scientifically, it's pretty interesting stuff," said Jim Fredrickson, Brockman's colleague on this project and a fellow microbiologist at the lab. "The material in the tank is self-boiling and quite hot, so it's not just radioactive and harsh chemicals but also in extreme heat."
Bacteria found in Hanford waste
Scientists studying the soil beneath a leaking Hanford nuclear waste storage tank have discovered more than 100 species of bacteria living in a toxic, radioactive environment that most would have thought inhospitable to all forms of life.
"Even in some of the most contaminated zones, we found a few living organisms," said Fred Brockman, a microbial ecologist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland. Brockman is presenting the findings today at the American Society for Microbiology's annual meeting in New Orleans.
For most living creatures, the nuclear and chemical waste in the underground storage tanks on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation is the deadliest mixture of toxins and radioactive muck on the planet.
For certain bacteria, however, this toxic goop left over from decades of nuclear weapons production appears to be just a second home.
"Scientifically, it's pretty interesting stuff," said Jim Fredrickson, Brockman's colleague on this project and a fellow microbiologist at the lab. "The material in the tank is self-boiling and quite hot, so it's not just radioactive and harsh chemicals but also in extreme heat."
This is the scary bit......
... QUOTE
"One of the most interesting findings was a strain of Deinococcus," Fredrickson said. It's a type of bacteria that's been found in Antarctica and on irradiated meat, he said, but never at Hanford before.
http://photoscience.la.asu.edu/photosyn/co...e/bioremed.html
http://www.nonukes.org/r09bior.htm
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/lon...98721.html?c=on
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3313181.stm
Seems like a really bright kid and an interesting experiment, but I think more research is needed before bringing this idea to an industrial scale.
Smart kid! I hope they can reproduce his findings.
I hope some evil, greedy scientist at some big lab DOESN'T STEAL the kid's research and uses it for his own profit...
And I hope the microbes exude fresh water only, or oxygen, or cotton candy, or something non-damaging.
Edited because I'm a moron.
And I hope the microbes exude fresh water only, or oxygen, or cotton candy, or something non-damaging.
Edited because I'm a moron.
First they find organisms that eat toxic radioactive waste, now plastic. All those greenpeace hippies don't have much to complain about now a days.
In the Original movie "The Andromeda Strain" the ALIEN microbe ate the seals in the containment sight, escaped, and all most destroyed the WORLD!
So sure, make a lot of this stuff.
So sure, make a lot of this stuff.
QUOTE (BiffSplitkins @ May 25 2008, 12:09 AM)
I wonder if there any potential side effects of mass producing this microbe? It ain't nice to fool with mother nature.
If the microbes get out of control we could always produce more crude to create more plastic bags to be devoured....
Not only would we keep people in jobs, but we save the evironment....
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