Posted on 12/20/2019 8:29:10 AM PST by nwrep
As she prepared to fly back to Portland in January 2017, Morgan Vague stood nervously in the security line at Houston Airport, hoping the TSA agents wouldn't notice the contraband stored in her carry-on bagnearly a dozen Ziploc bags full of dirt. The Reed College senior had flown to Texas to collect samples for her biology thesis project. Her theory was that, in areas with high rates of pollution, microbes would have evolved to eat certain types of plastic. Oregon's soil is too clean to accurately sample from, and many of the state's landfills and refineries are closed off. But that wouldn't be an issue in Houston, where she grew upthere are seven Superfund sites in her home county alone.
If she could isolate plastic-devouring bacteria in a lab, it could one day be put to use breaking down such environmental nuisances as the Pacific Ocean "garbage patch." Her fear, however, was that it would get flagged as a biohazard before she ever got the chance.
That's good news for Vagueand the planet. From one of the samples, collected at the beach in Galveston Bay, where she says hundreds of gallons of oil leak into the ocean daily, Vague was able to successfully isolate three strains of bacteria that break down and consume polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, a ubiquitous plasticone of which, Pseudomonas morganensis, has never before been discovered. Her research professor, Jay Mellies, has called it a "watershed" discovery.
"What we're focusing now on," Vague says, "is getting a more appreciable degradation of plastic faster. And once we get that, maybe scaling that up to some sort of industrial size that can really help us tackle this [pollution] problem."
I saw a TV show where some deep sea germs had been boring holes in the Perri Dish they had been collected in. I suspect they stopped the research when they realized what such a bug could unleash upon civilization. Imagine trying to turn on your computer and failing because some creatures were eating the plastic in that computer or you had a big mess in your refrigerator because some germs had eaten a hole in your milk container. It really is a Pandora’s box you want to stay sealed.
So to Pelosi, it would be a flesh eating bacteria.
My thoughts exactly. I seriously doubt hundreds of gallons are spilled into Galveston Bay daily. Total hit job on Texas and the energy industry.
Because she’s just that stupid to say such. Or more fake news.
Note the necklace with the golden calf. Almost a textbook definition of a pagan.
So someone at Weed College gets hassled by the TSA for sneaking baggies onboard a flight?
I can’t imagine *why*...
Um ... it’s a pug ...
LOL! That's a dog.....
What could go wrong?
Morgan Vague’s contribution to the research is ambiguous and unclear.
Pet Schiff is left over and you are required to pick it up in plastic bags, uh, wait one...
Could be natural seepage from the sea floor in the bay.
But, won’t the bacteria give off CO2 when they eat the plastic?
That should get her into a top graduate program.
Ding ding ding! We have a winner!
Another Oregon First!!!
Having been raised In Vancouver, Washington right across the river from Portland, this was heard regularly on the local Portland nightly news...
“...having a simple solution to solve a world wide problem.”
You mean “impacting their money and power train”
Rest assured, the moment this problem is solved, they’ll discover a brand new one that requires billions of dollars to “solve”.
Shhhhhhhhh!
Don’t let out Oregon’s little secret that that their environment isn’t as pure as snow.
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