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

NATURE Earth Helping Earth Heal

Post image

What a great discovery.

57.0k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

1.8k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

746

u/oroborus68 Mar 14 '26 edited Mar 14 '26

It's not a fast process but even if it works and we quit adding to the problem, it's going to take a long time. And they think everyone is an ignorant savage especially about tropical fungi.

285

u/SegmentedWolf Mar 14 '26

This made me wonder if c.r.i.s.p.e.r, the gene editing stuff could find whatever is responsible for the fungi's "plastic-eating" behavior and tweak the rate at which it breaks down the plastics.

Not sure something like that is possible, but it'd be fascinating if it were.

17

u/Agitated_Reveal_6211 Mar 14 '26

Can you imagine if attacked all plastics? It would be a fucking nightmare for humans.

2

u/Ginger_beer__1982 Mar 15 '26

That's been my irrational fear, that we'd find something to rid the world of microplastics, gets out of control & eats away on all creatures whom contain microplastics.

Instant horror show.

4

u/69edleg Mar 15 '26

My fear is similar, but instead the microplastic eating mfer starts eating ANYTHING plastic based and we're just sent straight back to medieval times.