Scientists have created an enzyme that decomposes plastic



    Plastic is a huge problem. More precisely, not the plastic itself, but the waste that filled the seas, oceans, land. Even in the most remote corners of the planet, to which it is difficult to get, they find unique cultural artifacts - plastic bottles, bags and much more. Some countries began to fight with manufacturers of plastic products, as well as with their mass consumers (for example, supermarkets, which are buying packages in billions).

    But this is not a quick war, the planet will have time to hide itself with a layer of plastic before the “fighters with packages” win. However, in addition to direct prohibitions, there are other ways of combating that may seem rather unexpected. For example, bacteria that feed on plastic, which serves as the basic material for the manufacture of most packaging materials. Now, having studied the vital activity of these bacteria, scientistsable to isolate the enzyme with which microorganisms process plastic.

    An international team of scientists not only isolated the enzyme, but also refined it, improving its molecular structure. Now the enzyme is a very effective tool in the fight against the approaching plastic - mainly with PET bottles. “The fact that we managed to improve the structure of the enzyme was a bit of a shock for us,” said the head of the research group.

    For the destruction of a certain mass of plastic enzyme takes several days. But still, these are not decades and centuries that are needed to complete the process of plastic decomposition in nature. Now scientists hope that they will be able to modify the enzyme so that it decomposes the plastic into its components. Subsequently, the resulting element can be collected again in a plastic molecule. Ideally, this would reduce the use of natural resources and reduce the impact of plastic production on the environment.

    At the moment in the world about 1 million plastic bottles are sold per minute. Of these, only 14% is recycled, which is very little. And the production of new bottles requires more and more new resources, including highly valuable oil.

    Plastic bags floating in the sea usually fool turtles that feed on jellyfish. The package soaring in thickness is almost the same in appearance from the jellyfish, so the turtles swallow the useless plastic and in some cases die from exhaustion. And the problem is not only in turtles - the smallest particles of plastic get into the digestive organs of plankton, reducing the ability of miniature organisms to feed. They massively die of hunger, as a result of which the fish that feed on plankton also leave. The trophic chain of marine ecosystems is disrupted.

    If scientists could find a way to recycle plastic or at least decompose it into components, compounds that do not adversely affect the environment, this could be the beginning of success in the issue of nature conservation or at least less rapid destruction of its individual components.

    By the way, it turned out not so long ago that plastic particles can be found in water almost anywhere in the world. The authors of the study, scientists from the University of Minnesota, analyzed 159 water samples from various regions of the Earth, including the United States, Europe, Indonesia, Uganda, Beirut, India and Ecuador. Plastic was found in 83% of samples; no country can boast that its water bodies are clean.

    Unfortunately, the researchers conducted only quantitative, but not qualitative analysis. That is, the types of plastic, the particles of which were found, were not determined . The purpose of the study was to show how plastic actually spread throughout the world.

    Last year, plastic microparticles were found in sea ​​salt . In addition, they are also found in marine organisms, in food, in beer, in honey, sugar and air.

    In 2014, European scientists showed that mollusc lovers consume about 11,000 tiny particles of plastic per year. Now you can calculate that if you drink about two liters of water daily, while in the US, the annual amount of plastic consumed by humans will be about 7,000 microparticles. This is if the research results are correct.

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