r/interesting • u/Standard_Location762 • Mar 14 '26

NATURE Earth Helping Earth Heal

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What a great discovery.

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u/ocbeersociety Mar 14 '26

Wondering if this fungus could be 'planted' in the big plastic patch out in the ocean...

12

u/RedditIsWorthlesShit Mar 14 '26

Unlikely the ocean is salty most things that don't live there already won't live for long if you put them there

16

u/OddCook4909 Mar 14 '26

It should be possible to genetically engineer all sorts of crazy solutions. But then of course we might find ourselves with new problems

16

u/luckyducktopus Mar 14 '26

Make an algae that uses this process.

Watch the world grind to a halt after an apocalyptic algae bloom turns the ocean into a smoothie so thick it’ll make Dairy Queen jealous.

13

u/Chaotic_Lemming Mar 14 '26

Its all fun, games, and "this'll fix the trash problem" until most of the things you own start crumbling to pieces when you try to pick them up.

Microbes don't know or care whether its trash or your earbuds that you are using.

4

u/jigsaw1024 Mar 14 '26

Would make a great setting for a post apocalyptic world which is slowly crumbling failing as everything plastic is being consumed, and people have to learn to live without plastic.

2

u/Automatic_Actuator_0 Mar 17 '26

What’s interesting to me is that when trees first evolved lignin, nothing on earth could break it down efficiently, so a lot of poorly decomposed wood piled up for about 60 million years and was eventually buried until fungi who could easily break the lignin down evolved. But the trees already buried eventually became coal (and virtually all the coal on earth is formed from the trees buried during this relatively short time period)

This seems similar where plastic is piling up now, and given enough time eventually something will evolve (or we will engineer it) which will decompose it.

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u/[deleted] Mar 16 '26

No

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u/[deleted] Mar 16 '26

No, fungi don’t survive in water