{"id":182952,"date":"2024-02-17T11:41:17","date_gmt":"2024-02-17T17:41:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/02\/plastic-eating-fungi-thriving-in-man-made-plastisphere-may-help-tackle-global-waste"},"modified":"2024-02-17T11:41:17","modified_gmt":"2024-02-17T17:41:17","slug":"plastic-eating-fungi-thriving-in-man-made-plastisphere-may-help-tackle-global-waste","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/02\/plastic-eating-fungi-thriving-in-man-made-plastisphere-may-help-tackle-global-waste","title":{"rendered":"Plastic-eating fungi thriving in man-made \u2018plastisphere\u2019 may help tackle global waste"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/plastic-eating-fungi-thriving-in-man-made-plastisphere-may-help-tackle-global-waste2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Year 2023 \ud83d\ude17 \ud83d\ude01<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>A new study published in the <i>Journal of Hazardous Materials<\/i> by researchers at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and partners has identified a diverse microbiome of plastic-degrading fungi and bacteria in the coastal salt marshes of Jiangsu, China.<\/p>\n<p>The international team of scientists counted a total of 184 fungal and 55 bacterial strains capable of breaking down polycaprolactone (PCL), a biodegradable polyester commonly used in the production of various polyurethanes. Of these, bacterial strains within the genera Jonesia and Streptomyces have the potential to further degrade other petroleum-based polymers\u2014natural or synthetic chains of molecules bound together.<\/p>\n<p>The plastic-degrading microorganisms were sampled in May 2021 from Dafeng in eastern China, a UNESCO-protected site near the Yellow Sea Coast. The sampling confirmed the presence of a terrestrial plastisphere, a term that is relatively new to terrestrial ecology as past studies have primarily focused on marine environments. The microbiome of this \u201cman-made ecological niche\u201d of coastal plastic debris was further found to be distinct from the surrounding soil.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Year 2023 \ud83d\ude17 \ud83d\ude01 A new study published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials by researchers at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and partners has identified a diverse microbiome of plastic-degrading fungi and bacteria in the coastal salt marshes of Jiangsu, China. The international team of scientists counted a total of 184 fungal and 55 [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1635,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-materials","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182952\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}