Enzymes made by gut bacteria in larvae of the beetle Zophobas morio can degrade polystyrene used in packaging, and could help recycle plastics
They found that these microbes produced a class of enzymes called hydrolases that use water to degrade the plastic polymer into styrene monomers, which are then broken down inside bacterial cells.The team divided 171 superworms into three groups that were each fed either wheat bran, polystyrene or no food at all for three weeks. The researchers found that the worms began to chew their way into blocks of polystyrene within a day.
However, the polystyrene-eating superworms put on less than a quarter of the weight gained by larvae that ate bran, suggesting eating plastic comes at a cost to their health. But the researchers are more interested in creating a superworm-free system that takes inspiration from the insects.“We will focus on creating a system that mimics the mechanical degradation of plastic by the superworm, followed by further degradation by bacterial enzymes… into metabolites that can then be used by other microbes to produce chemical compounds of higher value, such as the bioplastic polyhydroxyalkanoate,” says Rinke.
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