Not long ago I wrote a detailed article about our plastic problem and some interesting observations of plastic digesting organisms.[1]
Just recently the female Italian biologist and hobby beekeeper Federica Bertocchini found larvae of the wax moth Galleria mellonella[2] in a bee-hive and put them into a plastic bag. She was very surprised to see that after a while there appeared many holes in the bag.
Larva of Galleria mellonella:
By Sam Droege, no copyright
Together with her colleagues she started to monitor the animals within the frame of several tests, and found out that they are able to degrade plastic bags made of polyethylene (PE)[3] rather fast, where the end product is ethylene glycol. Furthermore the tests displayed that about 100 larvae of Galleria mellonella can eat circa 92 mg plastic within 12 hours. After only 40 minutes one could see the first holes in the bag.[4] This is faster than any other observed organism incorporated plastic until now.
The research has been published in "Current Biology".[5] The scientists seek to discover and hopefully extract the responsible enzyme(s), which enables the caterpillar to degrade PE. "If a single enzyme is responsible for this chemical process, its reproduction on a large scale using biotechnological methods should be achievable" said Cambridge's Paolo Bombelli, first author of the study published today in the journal Current Biology.[4]
One possible reason, why of all things these insects are able to degrade polyethylene, is that the beeswax on which they are growing can be considered as a kind of "natural plastic", whose chemical structure is not completely different from the structure of PE.
Adult moth:
