Supported plastic Modern life is cheap, powerful and versatile, but Difficult to deal with And when released to the environment, it will have serious effects. In particular, polyethylene is the most widely produced plastic in the world, with more than 100 million tons of annual distribution. As it can take decades to break down – it will hurt wildlife and degrade to harmful Microplastics– Its handling is an urgent problem for humanity.
In 2017, European researchers Discover Potential solutions. The larvae of wax-image moths (commonly known as wax worms) have the ability to break down polyethylene in the body. Since ancient times, wax worms have been considered pests because they parasitize bees and feed on beeswax. However, we now know that they also feed spontaneously on chemically similar polyethylene.
“About 2,000 wax worms can break down entire polyethylene bags in 24 hours, although we believe that co-supplementing with sugar stimulators can greatly reduce the number of worms,” said Bryan Cassone, Ph.D., a professor of biology at Brandon University in Canada, Canada, a Canadian professor of biology at Brandon University in Canada. Press release. Cassone and his team have been working on how to use these insects to help combat plastic pollution. “Understanding the biological mechanisms and consequences of adaptations associated with plastic biodegradation is key to the use of wax worms for large-scale plastic repair,” he said.
In previous experiments, Cathorne and his team Discovered Exactly how wax worms break down polyethylene. To understand their digestive mechanism, Cathon’s team fed the polyethylene to the worms for a few days and followed the insect’s metabolic process and changes in the gut environment. They found that when wax worms ate polyethylene, their feces liquefied and contained ethylene glycol as a by-product.
However, when the insect’s gut bacteria are inhibited by the administration of antibiotics, the amount of ethylene glycol in the feces is greatly reduced. This suggests that the breakdown of polyethylene depends on the gut microorganisms of wax worms.
The group also isolated bacteria from the guts of wax worms, and the cultured strains can survive on polyethylene as their sole food source. One of them Saccharomycessurvived in a laboratory environment for more than a year and continued to decompose polyethylene. This reveals that the gut flora of wax worms has the ability to break down plastic.
In fact, however, in terms of consuming plastic, gut bacteria are not a one-person job. When the researchers performed genetic analysis of the insects, they found that plastic-fed wax worms showed increased gene expression related to fat metabolism, and after being fed the plastic, wax worms properly showed signs of increased fat in their body. The larvae are equipped with plastic-digested gut bacteria that can break down plastic and convert it into lipids, which are then stored in the body.
However, a plastic diet alone did not lead to long-term survival of wax worms. In their latest experiments, the team found that wax worms that disappeared within just a few days continued to die and lost a lot of weight. This suggests that wax worms have difficulty dealing with polyethylene waste continuously. But researchers believe that creating a food source to assist its intake of polyethylene would mean wax worms can maintain a healthy viability of a plastic diet and improve decomposition efficiency.
Going forward, the team proposes two strategies to consume plastics using wax worms. One is to produce wax worms fed on a polyethylene diet while providing them with the nutritional support they need to survive for a long time, and then use the insect itself to incorporate it into the circular economy. Another is redesigning the plastic degradation pathways for wax worms in the lab, using only microorganisms and enzymes, so creating a plastic that doesn’t require actual insects.
In insect pathways, the by-product will be a large amount of insect biomass – no neck larvae, which have been fed by plastic. These could turn into highly nutritious feeds for the aquaculture industry, because insects may be a good source of protein for commercial fish, according to the research team.
This story originally appeared in wired Japan And has been translated from Japanese.
