A Very Hungry Bacteria: The plastic-consuming Comamonas Testosteroni
By Jacobo Garcia-Carrillo Campos
Right now, in every city, town and rural area around the world, humanity is experiencing a plastic waste epidemic. Per year, we generate around a million million times the weight of one plastic bottle [1]. If this number is hard to grasp, think that only two percent of this plastic is dumped in the ocean [2] and still, this amount is big enough to create five plastic islands that are each larger in size than France, Spain, and Germany put together [3]. Nevertheless, the American plastic packaging industry, with a worth of $365 billion, still denies how severe this problem really is.
Would companies like BASF or LyondellBasell and their hoards of lobbyists react differently if they knew about the severe toxicity of the microplastic residues they produce? Hundreds of studies [4] have proven that microplastics negatively affect many biological systems, like reproductivity, metabolism, and AchE activity (Acetylcholinerase completes neural transmissions). Though most likely, these big corporations still won’t care.
But many people do. In 2022, researchers from Northwestern University partnered with other universities in the U.S. and in Europe to study an interesting bacteria, Comamonas Testosteroni. This bacterium lacks the genetic material to process carbohydrates as a means of energy (think of sugar), so it prefers to munch on aromatic compounds, which are the building blocks for PET and Aramid plastics [4]. What this means essentially, is that this bacterium has the potential to be used to mass-recycle plastics because it can decompose plastics into simplified carbon products that are not harmful for the environment nor for humans or animals [4]. The bacteria can also degrade lignin, which is fibrous waste from vegetation, and laundry detergents.
Moreover, the researchers discovered that C. Testosteroni could also be used to create by-products for new plastics using old plastic materials. And the best part about all of this is how common the bacterium is in nature, because it can be found everywhere from sewage waste to heavy mulch bags at Home Depot.
Even though this is very exciting and break-through research, scientists still need to find out if the bacterium would be efficient at the high-industrial level needed to process the years of plastic waste that we have thrown off. So in the meantime, always remember to recycle any plastic bottles and candy wrappers and Ziploc bags and your old Barbies or Legos and all the other plastics that make up our world. And maybe one day we’ll all be feeding plastic treats to the very hungry C. Testosteroni.
[3]https://www.iberdrola.com/sustainability/5-garbage-patches-in-the-ocean
[4]https://www.nature.com/articles/s41589-022-01237-7
[5] https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2023/02/new-external-story/
