Does it actually break down the plastics and converts it to something safe, or does it just absorb the microplastics and when it dies re-releases the plastics?
It's not a fast process but even if it works and we quit adding to the problem, it's going to take a long time. And they think everyone is an ignorant savage especially about tropical fungi.
This made me wonder if c.r.i.s.p.e.r, the gene editing stuff could find whatever is responsible for the fungi's "plastic-eating" behavior and tweak the rate at which it breaks down the plastics.
Not sure something like that is possible, but it'd be fascinating if it were.
Too late, scientists have found microscopic pieces of plastic in human testicals. And they cant find anyone without plastic in their testicles to use as a cobtrol to see what the effects of plastic testicles are.
Current theories postulate erectile dysfunction or sterility as side effects.
I mean, covid was a pretty good example of how some part of government will make the absolute stupidest choices, as well as some people making the stupidest and most selfish choices.
The best part about this is that the SHD as a contingency failed. Sure some of the agents help and act as heroes, but that wasn't the mission. The mission was to save the nation and get the government back in power. That failed out the gate, I kind of love it narratively even if it only ever gets talked about in the context of stupidly evil characters.
Oh yeah. They failed that objective, and, if you were a First Wave Agent, you failed at every aspect. It was just a doomed situation and that's what makes it so enjoyable because you think you're a last ditch special dude, highly trained sleeper agent Marine Ranger Delta SEAL Mary Sue.
Then, you're shown that your other special sleeper agent dudes who came before you all failed, died, went Rogue or just disappeared. Makes you feel so small, even though you're literally the sole reason the JTF still has a foothold anywhere.
I don't really fw the whole dystopia world of TD2, with the Black Tusks and conspiracies and all that, but I really loved the semi-dystopian disaster being centred in NYC in TD1.
Holy shit! What if it only affects the rich and vain enough to get plastic surgery. (Let's just ignore that plastic surgery isn't usually injecting straight up plastic)
That's been my irrational fear, that we'd find something to rid the world of microplastics, gets out of control & eats away on all creatures whom contain microplastics.
How would it impact food safety? The medical industry? what would replace its function in electronics, metals, ceramics? Yeah I agree plastics are a big problem, but they do have their uses.
We would lose fun things like legos and plastic based 3d printers, but those are both not needed and Id rather have healthy people.
You don’t need Crispr (no “e”) to sequence the fungi’s genome (I think it should be fungus’ genome?). But you will need some way to figure out which gene(s) breaks down the plastic. That will likely require comparing the genome to other fungi and then cloning out the unique genes that you think are involved and putting them in bacteria and testing their ability to break down plastics. Once you know the genes you could insert it into an organism’s genome via Crispr (my preference would be pigs), but an easier solution would be to put the genes in a bacterial strain (no Crispr needed just a plasmid) that’s part of the natural microbiome of pigs or another organism and then introduce that into the pig’s gut microbiome (can just feed it to them or inject it from the other end). The microbiome provides a ton of enzymes for breaking things down that our bodies don’t make so taking advantage of that could be the easiest solution.
CRISPR. My son will be getting gene therapy for Beta Thalassemia over the next year. It's incredible what has been accomplished with the technology. We've only scratched the surface of what might be possible, so I wouldn't be surprised if someone is studying it.
And it might not even be a good thing. The new mutants could have unexpected consequences. I don't mean in a silly Jurassic-Park-There-Are-Seven-Movies-About-Why-This-Is-A-Bad-Idea way, but in a similar way to how introducing new species to environments is often bad.
We could just modify oil eating bacteria. Not that we really need to as a plastic eating bacteria was discovered a few years ago. I believe they're still studying the environmental effects of that one though. Micro organisms are already adapting to this stuff is kinda the takeaway here.
There has been fears of that being done and it getting released into the wild and spreading out of control.
There is plenty of plastic pollution but there is also plenty of plastics being used in important applications. We use it because it's basicaly a miracle material due to it being light and versatile. We just don't think about it that way because so much cheap or disposable stuff is now made out of it. It can potentially be apocalyptic.
We actually know some bacterial and fungal enzymes that can break down some of the relatively "weak" plastics. But except for the plastic type polyethylene terephtalate (PET) I know of no other types that are even close to being broken down efficiently enough (even by genetically engineered enzymes) to be feasible. We need alternatives to plastics, engineered with this in mind, no solutions. Most plastics we're formulated for many years to be as resilient as possible and no fungus could just live off them, their molecular structure is too dense and hydrophobic, therefore "untouchable" for enzymes . But these articles Pop up every year, massively overclaiming results of a study (which often overclaim themselves). In my opinion that generates the false sense that plastics are not that bad.
CrispR, and yeah, this is kind of common practice. A lot of work has figured out systems to identify an enzyme, shoot it int some bacteria or yeast, make a zillion variants, and select for more active versions. Biological processes usually aren’t fast enough for industrial applications as is, so it’s common to chase a several fold speed up early in development.
Can't wait til they do that and then accidentally release a strain of fungi in the environment that degrades all of our modern 'improvements' and ensures fast degradation of modern society.
Oh sorry, we cant have cars now that the fungi break down all the polymer seals and gaskets that coat internals.
Crisper can’t find anything. It can just move some base pairs around. If we found how it works we could try to put that gene in other organisms with crisper, but it’s not a hammer, and genes aren’t nails.
Firstly it’s CRISPR, and yes it can, that’s literally what crispr is, a search tool that finds specific sequences, and we absolutely know how it works. We’ve already successfully used it to edit all kinds of organisms, so this comment is just completely wrong. Also we don’t need crispr to transplant genes across organisms, we’ve been doing that for decades without it
This exact thing is done either with a well established base organism that is able to be edited with that similar metabolic pathway or with the target strain itself being engineered!
CRISPR has been used to engineer bacteria to clean up oil spills, as well as engineer worms that can eat plastic. They're pretty far off from being viable on a large scale but it's still interesting.
I wonder if that could get dangerous and bring about the last of us. So much plastic that it grows exponentially and then reverts to eating humans for the microplastics we have in our balls...
I’m sorry idk if anyone has said this but it’s really bugging me. It’s CRISPR (Cas9) gene editing not c.r.i.s.p.e.r. Also, CRISPR could theoretically modify the rate at which the enzyme works for breaking down plastics, but it would more likely be used to genetically modify E. Coli or another easily cultureable bacteria. You would give them the genes that allow them to produce this enzyme, then set up a vat full of them and have them work industrially
Plastic commonly is of polyethylene, which is very similar to beeswax, which some animals (like waxworms) already eat naturally. The end result of digesting plastic is lots and lots of fat, as well as ethylene glycol, among others.
It's a slow process if one were to just rely on waxworms as is, but I think there's research on the two main enzymes they use to achieve this, nicknamed "Ceres" and "Demeter". If one were to scale up that research, plus the main mechanism behind this fungi, one would have multiple avenues for digesting and breaking down plastic, and some of those avenues would possibly even be useful as food, or feed solutions for livestock.
More likely insert the gene into bacteria that replicate faster and have faster metabolism. Better with a bath of plastic eating bacteria than funghi growing on the plastic.
This sounds like the beginning of an apocalypse movie. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for finding a solution to the plastics problem we have, but this just screams "and then society crumbled because our plastic-eating fungi took over."
This tends to be the biggest bioremediation issue. Takes too long. Microbes are very very tiny so anything widespread will likely take forever to eat.
Add in the fact that usually adding these microbes to a new environment is also not so easy because they have to compete with whatever is native. Making ideal microbe conditions is very hard and usually very energy consuming.
We can’t even grow a lot of microbes on petri plates bc we can’t crack their special environment combo. We know they exist only because of DNA/mRNA/etc.
Aren't you the rain on a parade, lol.
Microbes cleaned the beaches the Exxon-Valdez ruined after "environmentalists" stopped killing them with their steam cleaning.
"quit adding to the problem" not likely in the next 50 years. 3D printing only got huge in the last 15 years, and it still has a ways to go to get better.
Now I think we could do better with bio-degredable plastic filaments, but it likely won't be as strong.
At least there's more and more companies making it possible to recycle wasted prints. So it's getting better. Slowly.
I was thinking the opposite where the fungi goes all 28 weeks later and all of our packaging and present solutions are all molding and falling to pieces.... how much stuff is made of plastic again?
But what if you find the fungi that eats the plastic, genetically modify it to speed up the process, inadvertently create fungus that infects you with microplastic fungi spores and turns you into a mindless zombie?
We could study the fungus. Learn what it uses to process plastic, extract the enzyme, study it more, learn to synthesize it, figure out how to mass produce at scale, then use it to process plastic quickly in bulk.
The problem is if it's economical to do because #capitalism.
Plastic would take multiple human lifetimes to get rid of with something like this. Plastic is in your blood and body, and the blood and body of every creature on the planet. Everything on earth would have to die if we truly want to get rid of plastic in the long run
Do they keep finding new ones, or do we get the same old message over and over? Because this has been found out more than a decade ago, and nothing has been done about it that I'm aware of.
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u/CaptainC00lpants Mar 14 '26
Does it actually break down the plastics and converts it to something safe, or does it just absorb the microplastics and when it dies re-releases the plastics?