Scientists Find Fungi Capable of Living on Plastic—and Breaking It Down.mp4

Amaze Lab

To say our planet has a bit of a plastics problem is a massive understatement as microplastics have been discovered pretty much everywhere, even inside the human body. However, part of solving that problem might include fungi that can effectively eat it.

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00:00to say our planet has a bit of a plastics problem is a massive understatement as microplastics have

00:09been discovered pretty much everywhere even inside the human body however part of solving

00:14that problem might include this fungi that can effectively eat it researchers found that in

00:19lake stetsland in northeastern germany four species of fungi could use plastic as a food

00:24source finding their favorite meal was polyurethane a material often used in construction foam the

00:29fungi were also able to consume polyethylene which plastic bags are made of they could also consume

00:34plastics from tires however the fungi were much slower at breaking down those polymers here's

00:39researcher hans peter grosart to explain the most surprising finding of our work and which is also

00:46different from other studies is that our fungi could exclusively grow on some of the synthetic polymers

00:55and even form biomass this is exceptional because uh it clearly demonstrates that these fungi are

01:03quite capable in degrading the synthetic polymers so could this solve our plastics problem unfortunately

01:09probably not the researchers say from an ecology standpoint adding new species to problem areas

01:14will likely only cause more problems still these fungi could be used in sewage treatment

01:19or other controlled conditions to break down plastics

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