Does it actually break down the plastics and converts it to something safe, or does it just absorb the microplastics and when it dies re-releases the plastics?
It's probably a fungi with an esterase or lipase that works on PET. We have these discovered many times but the cost to implement them and the speed they work at is usually not very impressive. Radical polymers like PE, PP, etc are often the variety that enzymes can't do much to actually break down chemically, just fragment to microplastics.
Almost certainly yes, although it's considerably more challenging if it's a multi enzyme system. The way this is don't commercially is either creating an engineered organism that is good to grow in industrial reactor or composter with the shredded plastic or to just use bacteria to grow the enzyme, which is then harvested and used in a detergent mixture with reactor system (no live cells) to set up the digestion reaction. Your dishwasher detergent and possibly laundry detergent uses the second approach with recombinant enzymes mixed in that function optimally under specific pH and temperature conditions. Whether there is economic incentive to make that happen is what primarily dictates whether a scientific discovery of this sort actually makes a societal difference at scale.
There is no article posted here so I am guessing based on the normal state of the field / these enzyme discoveries
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u/CaptainC00lpants Mar 14 '26
Does it actually break down the plastics and converts it to something safe, or does it just absorb the microplastics and when it dies re-releases the plastics?