Plastic-Eating Fungi Found in the Amazon May Solve World’s Waste Problem

PSFK.com ^ | March 7, 2012 | Emma Hutchings

[Twotone]

A group of students and professors from Yale University have found a fungi in the Amazon rainforest that can degrade and utilize the common plastic polyurethane (PUR). As part of the university’s Rainforest Expedition and Laboratory educational program, designed to engage undergraduate students in discovery-based research, the group searched for plants and cultured the micro-organisms within their tissue.

[Twotone]

I guess it's true that for every 'thing' in the world, there's somebody willing to eat it.

[Cicero]

Yeah, great. The search for oil-eating and plastic eating bugs.

Then, next thing you know, some freak Greenie group will let the things go all over the place, and plastic everywhere will start to fall apart. I can just see the supermarket shelves, now!

Great job, guys! But watch out, these fungi will eat your iPads!

[BykrBayb]

In other news, Cher and her offspring have gone into seclusion.

[dead]

As long as it doesn’t join forces with SkyNet.

[Yo-Yo]

This sounds like a SciFi novel’s plot. I can see unintended consequences for letting loose a plastic (oil) eating microbe into the wild.

[muir_redwoods]

Any chance, if it eats plastic, that it excretes crude oil? maybe gasoline?

[Miss Behave]

First they come for your plastic, then they come for your Gold Card.

[puppypusher]

If you ever watched the movie Andromeda Strain that was a part of the plot in the movie an unknown organism was eating the plastic hose fittings in an F4 Phantom causing the aircraft to crash and killing the pilot.

It’s amazing how far ahead sci-fi is ahead of science fact.

[Miss Behave]

"In other news, Cher and her offspring have gone into seclusion."

OMG BykrBayb. That's it--thread over, everyone. LOL.

[dangerdoc]

Is this supposed to be good news?

Get a spot on your new GM vehicle and end up with 2 pounds of cheap sheet metal and a hand full of screws.

[BykrBayb]

; )

[null and void]

And several hundred pounds of lead...

[Snickering Hound]

The genus Pestalotiopsis is grouped in the Xylariales order and comprises several known plant pathogens. The fungus is not host specific and causes rot and disease in a wide variety of plant species (29), although these isolates were all endophytic and the plants showed no pathogenic symptoms. Pestalotiopsis microspora isolates have previously been shown to have a propensity for horizontal gene transfer. In one notable case, a Pestalotiopsis microspora strain isolated as a fungal endophyte from the taxol-producing plant Taxus wallachiana had acquired the ability to synthesize taxol (27). Such a propensity for horizontal gene transfer may have contributed to the ability of a subset of these isolates to degrade polyester polyurethane as a sole carbon substrate, or it may reflect a significant level of phenotypic diversity among the genus.

Uhhh, this might not be sooo good...

[Da Coyote]

Any way to modify the DNA of that fungus so that it eats liberals?

[Daffynition]

Eli's coulda stayed right at home in New Haven...wandred down to the NH green and taken some bio-samples from the OWSers *still* there. EUWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!

[Twotone]

“The fungi can survive on polyurethane alone and is uniquely able to do so in an oxygen-free environment.”

As long as the iPads are aren’t buried in a land-fill, they should be okay. But I have no problem threatening the Greenies with such a possibility, just for the amusement value.

[dfwgator]

"Oh, Gus the gardener's gone now....and you went with him too....The fungus here reminds me of the fun Gus is having with you...."

[WillVoteForFood]

Sci Fi novel has been done on this subject. Story of a bacteria used to clean oil spills that end up consuming anything oil based. Read it a few years ago.

[NavyCanDo]

Follow-up story yet to be written:

Government spends half-million for plastic shipping containers to ship samples of Plastic-Eating Fungi. (Sarc)

[Daffynition]

LIEberals at Yale?..........No WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYY!