"The machinery in environmental microbes is still a largely untapped potential for uncovering sustainable solutions we can exploit," said Ludmilla Aristilde, senior author on the study and associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northwestern University.
"If you want to eat beef, you need to cut [it] into different parts, and some parts you can eat, some parts you cannot," Zhou said. This analogy highlights the bacteria's process in breaking down plastics into digestible components.
The researchers are the first to demonstrate not only that this bacteria can break down plastic, but they also illuminate exactly how they do it.
The bacteria first physically break down plastic by chewing it into smaller pieces, then release enzymes to chemically convert the plastic into terephthalate, a carbon-rich food source.
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