I’m sure nothing can go wrong when that fungus spreads across all of the Pacific, due to an abundant food source only it can use.
Great news, but does anyone else get Nanites/Grey Goo vibes from this?
More worried by the sci fi like future.
Where this stuff evolves into something that looks to hunt mankind. Due to the micro plastics we all have in our bodies.
Huge black fungus blobs rolling up the beach. Covering sun bathers and slowly absorbing the living body over decades.
Plastic is stored in the balls.
So “P” was short for “Plastic” all along!
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
An international cohort of marine scientists discovered an ocean-borne fungus chomping through plastic trash suspended in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, as detailed in a new study published in the journal Science of the Total Environment.
Dubbed Parengyodontium album, the fungus was discovered among the thin layers of other microbes that live in and around the floating plastic pile in the North Pacific.
Researchers found that P. album was specifically able to break down UV-exposed carbon-based polyethylene, which is the type of plastic most commonly used to make consumer products, like water bottles and grocery bags — and the most pervasive form of plastic waste that pollutes Earth’s oceans.
“It was already known that UV light breaks down plastic by itself mechanically,” said study lead author Annika Vaksmaa, a marine biologist and biogeochemist at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ), in a statement, “but our results show that it also facilitates the biological plastic breakdown by marine fungi.”
According to the research, lab-grown P. album was observed to break down a given piece of UV-treated plastic at a rate of roughly 0.05 percent per day for every nine-day period.
Which isn’t nothing, but it’d take a very long time for the bacteria to get through the entirety of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, let alone the millions of metric tons of plastics that enter the ocean every year.
The original article contains 454 words, the summary contains 226 words. Saved 50%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Oyster mushrooms eat plastic.
This isn’t anything new to science.
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Every human likely has microplastics in their bodies.
I’m sure this will go over fine. Totally not gonna see any adverse effects.
They can join the gut flora party!! 🎉
