Plastic pollution is one of the defining environmental challenges of our time – and some of nature’s tiniest organisms may offer a surprising way out.
In recent years, microbiologists have discovered bacteria capable of breaking down various types of plastic, hinting at a more sustainable path forward.
These “plastic-eating” microbes could one day help shrink the mountains of waste clogging landfills and oceans. But they are not always a perfect fix. In the wrong environment, they could cause serious problems.
Plastics are widely used in hospitals in things such as sutures (especially the dissolving type), wound dressings and implants. So might the bacteria found in hospitals break down and feed on plastic?
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To find out, we studied the genomes of known hospital pathogens (harmful bacteria) to see if they had the same plastic-degrading enzymes found in some bacteria in the environment.
We were surprised to find that some hospital germs, such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa, might be able to break down plastic.
P aeruginosa is associated with about 559,000 deaths globally each year. And many of the infections are picked up in hospitals.
Patients on ventilators or with open wounds from surgery or burns are at particular risk of a P aeruginosa infection. As are those who have catheters.
We decided to move forward from our computational search of bacterial databases to test the plastic-eating ability of P aeruginosa in the laboratory.
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