Wondering if any of y'all have heard about this...I remember seeing something a little while back, looking at bacteria colonising plastic in the ocean. Scientists found that bacteria rapidly colonised the floating plastic but found no evidence that they were able to break it down or digest it in any way...it seems evolution has yet to bestow them with such powers and the necessary enzymes to do this.

However, it looks like a species of fungus has recently been found in the Amazon which can do just this! Very impressive all the things fungi can do...

An article on it:

http://www.highpants.com/cankler/?p=4973

and the original scientific paper:

http://aem.asm.org/content/77/17/6076.full

Very interesting! There is a world of possibilities with this fungus! Thanks for the share!

Its the fungus man! Fungus is gonna save us all! Anyone remember that live action Super Mario Brothers movie? Remember how fungus was in just about every part of their city and had a variety of uses? That'll be us in the future

All kidding aside, this organism could have a HUGE impact on helping our environmental crisis if it can be properly utilized.

Very interesting! Isolating the enzyme, and utilising this for the biodegradation of plastic could be a very important discovery.

Peace

Macre

I'd rather we just stopped making plastic, utterly stopped. Perhaps recycling a bit here and there as we weened ourselves. In the meantime, how about letting the fungus just do it's job. It's here to help clean up our mess. We want to help--by isolating some enzyme?

Not that there's anything wrong with isolating enzymes per-se`. I'm just saying, we've done enough. Now's a good time to leave it alone. Stop messing with it. The earth can heal itself.


Enzymes are not what needs isolating right now. Fundamental attitudes are what needs looking at. The attitude of "hey, fungus just gave us an enzyme, this will allow us to continue business as usual"--I wonder, perhaps that is not the right attitude?

This is really cool. This fungus could be used in so many possible ways, or even be cultivated for its chemical constituents like Macre suggested. This may be a great opportunity for mankind to clean up after ourselves.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with isolating properties from fungus and using them to our advanatage. Dont forget the most famous psychedelic LSD was synthesized from isolated fungus alkaloids. Certainly more enjoyable than the gangrene-inducing natural ergot. Also, becuase of its extreme utility and low cost people will never stop using plastic.

Overall attitudes on environmental responsibility and recycling are changing with time, though it is a slow process. Alittle help from some friendly fungus that can break down plastics which normally take 500-1000 years to photodegrade would be a miraculous thing.

a little genetic manipulation and we can get rid of plastics altogether