In 2012, Nature revealed that humans provide a home to thousands of different species of microbes in a series of papers that opened a path to understanding the impact of the human microbiome on our health.
From Biology News - Evolution, Cell theory, Gene theory, Microbiology, Biotechnology via This RSS Feed.
As optimistic as we kind of have to be about bacteria/Fungai evolving the ability to digest polyethels… I could see this getting out of hand to the point that plastics become completely unviable because the bacteria that eats them evolved to live in ambient environments. Like imagine if plastics had to be constantly sanitized otherwise they’d break down in weeks to months.
Maybe getting out of hand isn’t the right figure of speech.
Regardless, makes for a good writing prompt.
Oh, absolutely! That’s only a question of when IMO. Based on a rudimentary understanding of the evolutionary mechanisms at play here.
I mean what I’m imagining could be bottlenecked by some aspect of biology that is rooted in physics/chemistry. No clue haha.
But I would love to watch a disaster movie where plastic eating bacteria/etc throws the world into chaos over the course of a few months.
I imagine anything that evolved naturally to not have a huge impact because being able to suggest various plastics doesn’t confer enough of an evolutionary advantage to invest in it.
However we’re already searching for and breeding for much more efficient organisms to be used in bio reactors for recycling purposes[1].
So of a particular effective variant, whatever the origin, were to be able to break down plastic before it’s discarded things could get interesting. Thinking of pipes, bags, package linings, clothes, etc. It’s a lengthy list.
1: https://sciencesensei.com/the-bacteria-that-eat-plastic-waste-are-evolving-faster-than-expected/