Here's another angle of the little recycle beast.
Posted on 06/12/2024 1:25:07 PM PDT by Red Badger
Been postulated for at least one sci-fi novel....civilization is knocked back to the 19th century by an organism that eats plastic insulation on wires.
I see a new Godzilla movie in the works!
Congratulations, P. album. You’re hired!
There’s a fungus among us.
While the “discovery” in this article may be new, there is nothing new about bugs eating petroleum and hydrocarbons.
I remember when the Deepwater Horizon oil spill occurred. There were ‘scientists’ who tried to questimate the total amount of oil that was released into the Gulf. After they determined an amount, they set off to find the huge underwater oil plumes and surface oil. There was much less than expected. What real scientists found were huuuuge plumes of microorganisms that eat, yes eat, oil. A massive (more than huuuuge) amount of oil naturally seeps into the oceans from the ocean floor. IT’S PART OF THE EARTH. It is food for some parts of the Earth.
A quick search finds much information on our little buddies that dine on petroleum and plastic.
“”Natural and synthetic plastics are degraded by the action of microorganisms including bacteria, actinomycetes, and fungi (Ishigaki et al., 2004; Alshehrei, 2017).””
every party has at least one fungi!
kinda hoping this bacteria eats another plastic variant, i.e. Democrats.
I’m not interested in killing anyone.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics.
How profound. Was that your personal creation?
Look out for gain of function science.
Doorways (1993) was a proposed science fiction pilot that was never picked up. A mysterious alien feral woman appears on a freeway and after causing an accident with her weapon is taken to a hospital where she and the doctor that treated her eventually jump between alternate Earths to flee from the alien overlords who are chasing the alien woman.
They end up in a world where, 15 years ago, a microbe gene was created to clean up an oil spill, but it ate all petroleum in the world. They hitch a ride on a wagon (an Airstream trailer pulled by draft horses) with Jake (Hoyt Axton) and his granddaughter Cissy (Tisha Putman), who give them a ride to the nearest truck stop.The pilot is on Prime video, or video on the link which I started with the pair of protagonist are hitching a ride on the Airstream trailer.
So what does it poop then? Nylon?
The starting event sounds exactly like the one in the book except that bacteria mutated and began to eat everything made with oil so all plastic, nylon and so forth. The end result was the release of all the germs in laboratories resulting it "wild deenas (DNA)" causing runaway mutations.
“eats plastic insulation on wires”
Mice and rats are doing a fine job of that today.
Shred and make a slurry in salt water. Expose to UV. Innoculate with fungus.
On Land, Mealworms eat polystyrene.
Biodegradation and Mineralization of Polystyrene by Plastic-Eating Mealworms: Part 1. Chemical and Physical Characterization and Isotopic Tests "Polystyrene (PS) is generally considered to be durable and resistant to biodegradation. Mealworms (the larvae of Tenebrio molitor Linnaeus) from different sources chew and eat Styrofoam, a common PS product. The Styrofoam was efficiently degraded in the larval gut within a retention time of less than 24 h. Fed with Styrofoam as the sole diet, the larvae lived as well as those fed with a normal diet (bran) over a period of 1 month. The analysis of fecula egested from Styrofoam-feeding larvae, using gel permeation chromatography (GPC), solid-state 13C cross-polarization/magic angle spinning nuclear magnetic resonance (CP/MAS NMR) spectroscopy, and thermogravimetric Fourier transform infrared (TG–FTIR) spectroscopy, substantiated that cleavage/depolymerization of long-chain PS molecules and the formation of depolymerized metabolites occurred in the larval gut. Within a 16 day test period, 47.7% of the ingested Styrofoam carbon was converted into CO2 and the residue (ca. 49.2%) was egested as fecula with a limited fraction incorporated into biomass (ca. 0.5%). Tests with α 13C- or β 13C-labeled PS confirmed that the 13C-labeled PS was mineralized to 13CO2 and incorporated into lipids. The discovery of the rapid biodegradation of PS in the larval gut reveals a new fate for plastic waste in the environment."
Not sure if you want to feed it to your reptiles or use them to make "Insect Protein Meal"!
So do fire ants, I've read.
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