VATIS UPDATE Article

Researchers at Kyoto University, Japan, have discovered a plastic-eating bacteria that could have a major impact on recycling efforts around the world. Similar research by Ambercycle Inc., the United States, has been rewarded with a 250,000-euro ($283,000) Global Change Award funded by the H&M Conscious Foundation, an arm of Stockholm, Sweden-based clothing retailer H&M. The Kyoto team has found a plastic-eating microbe after five years of searching through 250 samples of rubbish. They isolated a bacteria that could live on polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a common plastic used in bottles and clothing.

The team has named the new species of bacteria Ideonella sakaiensis. Unlike natural polymers, such as plant cellulose, plastics aren’t generally biodegradable. The Conversation story notes bacteria and fungi co-evolved with natural materials, developing biochemical methods to harness the resources from dead matter. But plastics have been around for only about 70 years, so microorganisms haven’t evolved to the point at which they can latch onto the plastic fibers, break them up, and then use the resulting chemicals as a source of energy and carbon that they need to grow.

The researchers more or less left the PET in a warm jar with the bacterial culture and some other nutrients, and a few weeks later all the plastic was gone. Second is that the team has identified the enzymes that Ideonella sakaiensis uses to breakdown PET. All living things contain enzymes that they use to speed up necessary chemical reactions. The Kyoto researchers identified the gene in the bacteria’s DNA that is responsible for the PET-digesting enzyme, and were able to manufacture more of the enzyme and then demonstrate that PET could be broken down with the enzyme alone.