A discovery that could help clean up plastic pollution in the Oceans
Photo credit: TERI BALDASSARI
In 2016, while sifting through plastic waste Japanese scientists found bacteria capable of “eating” one of the world’s most predominant plastics ― polyethylene terephthalate, or PET.
While the discovery was hailed as a breakthrough another team of scientists has accidentally mutated the bacteria to create a "super" plastic eating enzyme.
As they say, some of our greatest discoveries have come by chance. In this case, the scientists were observing the original bacteria by shining intense X-rays on it, 10 billion times brighter than the sun. This caused a mutation and thus a new enzyme emerged.
Perhaps X-rays, 10 billion times brighter than the sun causing a mutation shouldn't really be a surprise but regardless it's benefits are. This could obviously be a boon to cleaning up the plastic waste polluting the oceans and killing its wildlife.
It's estimated that every year, 8 million metric tons of plastics pollute the oceans, on top of the 50 million metric tons already there.
While cleaning the oceans is essential, stopping the pollution is the true solution.
That discovery is yet to be had.
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