I read a news about a type worm that could digest plastic. Below is my summary of that topic.
Australian scientists have found the Zophobas morio - commonly known as a superworm - can survive on a diet of polystyrene. They believe the beetle larvae digest the plastic through a gut enzyme. That could be significant for advancements in recycling. Polystyrene (PS), including extruded polystyrene (also known as styrofoam), is among the most commonly produced plastics worldwide.
In this study, the researchers changed in the gut microbiome of superworms (Zophobas morio) reared on bran, PS or under starvation conditions over a 3 weeks period. Superworms on all diets were able to complete their life cycle to pupae and imago, although superworms reared on PS had minimal weight gains, resulting in lower pupation rates compared to bran reared worms. The change in microbial gut communities from baseline differed considerably between diet groups, with polystyrene and starvation groups characterized by a loss of microbial diversity and the presence of opportunistic pathogens. This study confirms that superworms can survive on polystyrene feed, but this diet has considerable negative impacts on host gut microbiome diversity and health.
The minimal weight gain of the larvae on a PS diet will probably hamper their use in the PS recycling process. In particular, downstream applications such as biodiesel production from superworm fatty esters, an approach that has been proven feasible using superworms raised on regular feed, might not be achievable. Diet diversification, for example by supplementing styrofoam with food waste, could help to counteract the dietary deficits of the unbalanced PS feed and might increase gut microbiome health and subsequently host weight gain.
The researchers hope to identify which enzyme is the most effective so it can be reproduced at scale for recycling. Plastic would then be mechanically shredded, before being treated with the enzyme. The breakdown products from this reaction can then be used by other microbes to create high-value compounds such as bioplastics.
Despite the promise from this study, the scale-up and translation of research like this is always a challenge, which is magnified in the area of plastics by the incredible scale of the problem and the economics in terms of how cheap new plastic is to produce.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-61727942
https://www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/journal/mgen/10.1099/mgen.0.000842
No comments:
Post a Comment