New technological breakthroughs in the degradation

New breakthroughs have been made in the degradation of plastic waste

Plastic waste, also known as "white pollution", is one of the 16 major "public hazards" in the world. Currently, Minhou has cultivated municipal key projects for technological transformation, which are usually only used in laboratories, and has become an important factor threatening the ecological environment. After drinking the discarded mineral water bottles, plastic garbage in the ocean... These are stubborn garbage that is difficult to be degraded in nature, threatening the environment that plays a decisive role in the measurement of tension accuracy. The traditional treatment methods of plastic garbage have high energy consumption and pollution. Recently, the undergraduate team of the school of chemical engineering of Tianjin University has developed a "high-efficiency plastic biodegradation system based on mixed bacteria system", which realizes the in-situ decomposition of plastic waste by feeding bacteria to "eat" plastic

this research achievement recently won the gold medal of the 2016 international genetic engineering machine design competition (iGEM) hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of technology

mixed bacteria system is an artificially designed bacterial organization, just like the "small society" of bacteria, which allows different strains to perform their respective duties. In the system, some bacteria degrade the macromolecules in plastic into small molecules, while others absorb or convert small molecules into other beneficial substances

"it's easy to say, but people can't 'communicate' with bacteria directly. There is no way to tell bacteria when they should show the function of artificial design. Moreover, the survival ability of different strains is very different. Often, dominant strains will rob other strains of nutrients and eliminate all other strains, resulting in 'dominance'." Project members said

through hundreds of mixed bacteria experiments, the students continued to explore the bacterial culture conditions, and finally successfully developed a mixed bacteria system that allows different strains to "coexist peacefully". They cleverly designed a metabolic path in the mixed bacteria system, which reduced the competition between bacteria for nutrients and achieved the stability of the mixed bacteria system. "This mixed bacteria system can completely degrade common plastics in life. As long as the mixed bacteria system is released into nature, they will efficiently decompose polyester plastics that have not changed significantly for thousands of years, which is expected to realize the in-situ decomposition of plastic waste." Project members said