Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hi
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, I'm more in vogel bomb in. Today's episode
Speaker 1: is another classic from our archives. It's about the discovery
Speaker 1: in of bacteria that can eat certain types of plastic
Speaker 1: and thus break it down, giving us hope that we
Speaker 1: may one day be able to make a dent in
Speaker 1: humanity's plastic waste. These bacteria are still being researched. Scientists say,
Speaker 1: we're unfortunately still years away from being to put this
Speaker 1: discovery into practical use, but it's still a fascinating discovery. Hey,
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren vogel Bomb Here. One of the amazing
Speaker 1: things about our universe is that nothing really goes to waste.
Speaker 1: For instance, you the incredible master work that you are
Speaker 1: happened to be composed of the trash that exploded out
Speaker 1: of a supernova. In every nook and cranny of the cosmos,
Speaker 1: the universe is reorganizing and reusing. It is the great
Speaker 1: resaw cycler. Our planet recycles everything, water, carbon, nutrients of
Speaker 1: all kinds, So it stands to reason that we'd be
Speaker 1: really good at recycling stuff here on Earth. But we
Speaker 1: humans are only so so recyclers take plastic. We do
Speaker 1: a great job of digging up ancient deposits of carbon
Speaker 1: in order to make the stuff, which is recycling sort of.
Speaker 1: But since the nineteen forties, we've manufactured mind boggling amounts
Speaker 1: of a material that will likely hang out in the
Speaker 1: environment for centuries, killing wildlife and leaching toxic chemicals. Only
Speaker 1: about ten percent of that is ever recycled. But in
Speaker 1: a Japanese research team discovered bacteria making some inroads into
Speaker 1: plastics recycling where we humans were failing. Poly Ethylene tarithalate,
Speaker 1: or PET plastics are everywhere, most notably in plastic soda
Speaker 1: and water bottles, and the bonds that hold its molecules
Speaker 1: together are very strong. So it was something of a
Speaker 1: surprise when a colony of these bacteria were discovered in
Speaker 1: a Japanese landfill. But what's their secret? In a issue
Speaker 1: of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
Speaker 1: an international group of researchers reported on the pet busting
Speaker 1: enzyme produced by these bacteria. Not only did they map
Speaker 1: the structure of the enzyme, but in the process of
Speaker 1: studying and tinkering with it, they also made it faster.
Speaker 1: Turns out it was all a bit of an accident.
Speaker 1: Lead author Greg Beckham, senior engineer at the National Renewable
Speaker 1: Energy Laboratory, said in a press release. We hoped to
Speaker 1: determine its structure to aid in protein engineering, but we
Speaker 1: ended up going a step further and accidentally engineered an
Speaker 1: enzyme with improved performance at breaking down these plastics. What
Speaker 1: we've learned is that p E t A s is
Speaker 1: not yet fully optimized to degrade PET, and now that
Speaker 1: we've shown this, it's time to apply the tools of
Speaker 1: protein engineering and evolution to continue to improve it. The
Speaker 1: goal of this research is to find a way to
Speaker 1: create an enzyme that works fast and to break down
Speaker 1: huge amounts of pet plastic into its component parts so
Speaker 1: it can be turned back into plastic bottles. One possible
Speaker 1: solution is to plant this mutant enzyme into bacteria that
Speaker 1: can withstand insanely high temperatures, which might break the plastic
Speaker 1: down ten to a hundred times quicker, or whatever it takes. Y'all,
Speaker 1: we humans buy one million plastic bottles every minute. Reduce
Speaker 1: and recycle your plastic waste. But it also can't hurt
Speaker 1: to keep your fingers crossed for these bacteria to work
Speaker 1: out Today's episode is based on the article plastic eating enzyme,
Speaker 1: Maybe our Planet's New Hope on how stuff works dot Com.
Speaker 1: Written by Dslin Shields. Brain Stuffs production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio in partnership with stuff works dot Com and it's
Speaker 1: produced by Tyler Clay. Four more podcasts from my heart Radio.
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