This bacterium uses plastic as a resource: where is the trap?

Can a material made to resist become a resource for a microorganism? In 2016, a team described Ideonella sakaiensis, a bacterium isolated after examining microbial communities exposed to PET, a common plastic.

The researchers show that it can use this material as a major source of carbon and energy. Two enzymes are involved in its decomposition. The observation is not limited to seeing a bottle disappear: it identifies a biological pathway and the molecular tools that make it possible.

The word plastic, however, covers a very diverse family of materials. A capacity demonstrated on PET under experimental conditions does not announce the disappearance of all waste in the wild. The interest of this story is more solid than a miracle: an industrial problem led researchers to examine what a tiny organism was already doing.