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I heard about the discovery of plastic eating bacteria years ago, and had always wondered why they weren't just spreading in nature and eating all the microplastics. This sheds a lot of light on current events in the field!
Without artificial selection, the few bacteria capable of digesting some plastics only do so when it's the only source of carbon and energy. Plastics require expressing complex enzymes and the process is not efficient.
If you have literally any other sugar available in your environment, it's better to digest that instead. So they aren't out there absolutely massacring plastic waste, unless they happen to be in an environment where this is all that's left.
I wonder if they could be bred to be unable to directly metabolize sugar, or if that's a ridiculous thought.
Easily. But then they would be outcompeted by bacteria that can.
Unless they have a sole niche they alone can occupy, like prevalent plastic, maybe.
From what i know they are modified E. coli bacteria and where not released due to fears they would cause more problems than good in nature. Also they could potentially harm humans.
Give them a few millenia
That's how we got kudzu.
THROW THEM INTO THE OCEAN
So this is how the grey goo starts.
Nah, I think I already had that in my Big Mac.
Wow what an interesting answer hopeful article. 250kg of plastic recycling a day is impressive but it's still being made back into plastic and Oda thinks that we can fully reserve the cycle and recycle plastic back into natural material.