As the garbage crisis escalates, scientists across the world are trying to find bacteria and bugs that consume trash. A Styrofoam-eating worm is the latest.
an enzyme which could digest polyethylene terephthalate, a plastic resin found in clothes, liquid and food containers.Wei-min Wu, a senior researcher at Stanford University who led its mealworm study, said there has been a growing chorus of researchers looking for natural solutions to recycle plastic because of the environmental risks.
To conduct the study, his research team in Australia fed the superworms three separate diets. One group was given a “healthy” solution of bran. The second was given polystyrene. The third was put on a starvation diet.Ninety percent of the larvae that ate bran became beetles, compared with roughly 66 percent from the group given polystyrene and 10 percent from those forced to starve. This indicated to researchers that superworms have enzymes in their gut that can effectively digest Styrofoam.
Despite the findings from Rinke and others, there are reasons that none have successfully translated into industry applications over the past decade, researchers said. Andrew Ellington, a professor of molecular biosciences at the University of Texas at Austin, said it has been difficult to find a plastic-digesting organism or enzyme that can operate in industrial conditions, which often process trash in very hot environments or through the use of organic solvents.
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