Environment

Plastic Eaters

Mutant plastic-dissolving enzymes could help curb the increasing global plastic pollution that threatens marine life and even the humans who eat it.

Researchers from the University of Portsmouth were studying a bacterium discovered at a Japanese dump in 2016 that had naturally evolved to eat plastic.

While using ultra-intense beams of X-rays to examine the structure of the key enzyme produced by the bacterium, they accidentally improved the enzyme’s ability to break down the kind of plastic used to make beverage bottles.