Back in the fall of 2004, I submitted a prediction to TimeLine+25, a web based "cultural experiment" where random individuals were asked to predict near future events.
Here was my entry for the year 2025:
Plastic eating bacteria
Novel forms of bacteria which subsist solely on various forms of plastic come to life. Plastic around the world starts to decompose. Although plastic from garbage dumps "becomes" biodegradable, computers, airplane parts, CDs, DVDs and many everyday items start to rot. Panic sets in across the industrialized world.
OK so I was off by 19 years ... and I thought that it would be bacteria instead of fungi, but the future is now.
From Nature News:
A fungus that normally eats wood can also chew up some of the long-lasting plastic resins that clog landfill sites, researchers in the United States have found. This potentially offers an environmentally friendly way to recycle the waste....
Adam Gusse and his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse wondered whether white-rot fungi might be able to attack the resins. These fungi are commonly seen on rotting tree stumps and manufacture an array of enzymes able to break down the tough lignin in wood. Lignin has a similar chemical structure to phenolic resins, because it is also made up of ring-like molecules strung together.
Digesting the indigestible
Gusse fed chips of phenolic resin to five different species of white-rot fungus to see whether they could eat it. The team found that one species (Phanerochaete chrysosporium) turned from white to pink after a few days, suggesting that it had broken down the resin into smaller chemical components of the polymer known to be pink.
The team confirmed this by feeding the fungus phenolic resin containing a heavier isotope of carbon, and found that the isotope was incorporated into the fungus after it had feasted on the plastic. To nail the case, they used an electron microscope to show that the resin was pitted with craters after being semi-digested by the fungus. "It's clearly breaking it down," Gusse says.
Some advice for you: backup all your data on stone tablets.
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I have a similar idea in notes, from the late 80's, for a novel set in 2015. There it began as a microbe engineered to quickly decompose oceanic oil spills, which mutated into a plastic-eating bug. The teenage daughter of the protagonist comes home one day to find most of her wardrobe dripping onto the floor of her closet. This despite the fact the household practiced all the standard "plastics hygiene".
Her mother, a TV journalist, is pursuing a mysterious background story that isn't revealed until the denouement -- this microbe as undergone further evolution and gotten into the major Middle Eastern oil deposits where is rapidly destroying most the world's crude oil.
Here's another idea from those notes -- TVU. TVU [TV You] is a television channel that broadcasts 24/7/365, live, whatever its editors judge to be the most interesting video being shot on the planet. The globe is filled with millions of cheap, tiny video cams with built-in satellite phones so the action can be beamed up as it's shot.
TVU is one giant hierarchy of editors who monitor these uplinks, and pass the most interesting up the chain. Eventually one [or multiple] live clips get broadcast, anything from revolutions to train wrecks to people dying to whatever. No one knows in advance what will be broadcast. The mostly amateur videographers get paid, once footage reaches a certain editorial level, according to how high up it goes, even if never broadcast.
I remember a novel titled "Mutant 59: Invasion of the Plastic Eaters". A bit of googling says it was from 1973.
IIRC, a cheesy lab accident released an experimental bacterium, which then got a boost from a new kind of degradable-plastic bottle, and started eating all sorts of plastics. Very inconvenient for all concerned, but they managed to pass up "end-of-the-world" scenarios in favor of "aw, *$%#, how do we fix this situation?". Very amusing scene in a polyester-heavy department store....
I've though about this quite a bit, and it seems like quite a few others have as well. The ample carbon-carbon in plastic would be a great energy source for little critters.
Sounds like a new con spiracy theory discussion group has just been born.
A couple of things to consider:
1)Enzymes are pretty specific, I would imagine that each organism would specialize in digesting one type of plastic polymer.
2)This fungi eats an epoxy-resin. Presumably the enzyme(s) that break down ligin have been modified. What other plastic polymers would be susceptible to digestive enzymes?
3)So if plastic eating bacteria/fungi started spreading, what would be the first major disaster? This would obviously depend on the type of plastic a given organism eats.
I love it! I remember in a class once - talking about white rot fungi - and how if we ever genetically engineer a "super white rot" that we could get rid of our bad tupperware problem. I can't wait to read "Mutant 59: Invasion of the Plastic Eaters" - now that's what I call summertime reading! Maybe if we fear losing plastics, we'll get over our oil dependency...my lab also came up with a scenario that if we put an oil degrader into the middle east mix (a new form of "bioterrorism"), that we could eventually come to the conclusion that diplomacy isn't so bad a thing afterall. We called it a Microbial Truce. (Unfortunately, the microbe we need doesn't exist...yet).
One problem that comes to mind with respect to putting oil-eaters into the ground (i.e., taking out the oil field) is, just what would they *do* with these heavily reduced organics, in a presumably anoxic underground chamber?
It seems to me the most serious problem with plastic-eaters would be electrical insulation and similar "sealant" applications. Those have thin layers of material, which are both expected and required to remain completely intact without regular upkeep. Hmmm... I wonder if it's physically plausible for bacterial and/or fungal colonies to skim energy off an electrical leak?
Alternating different materials would help for a while, but many microorganisms can trade genes like Pokemon cards. So, two strains with different targets can eventually give rise to one strain that can handle *both* targets.
Good point.
Another good point. I guess until now (i.e. post-industrial world) there weren't any reliable (and constant) sources of electric current.
Re: oil, you're probably right. Most of the energy can only occur through an oxidative reaction. However our "pumped" oil may now become susceptible. Imagine if the strategic national oil reserves started to rot ...
There are a number of reactions, primarily mediated by sulfate-reducing bacteria, that can occur under anoxic conditions. The kinetics of some of these reactions are only a bit slower than those of oxidative events. Interestingly, the lower molecular weight components (more like what you would see in the gasoline fraction) are the most susceptible to degradation. Oil is so complex structurally that the possibility of finding a microorganism (or even engineering one) with the necessary enzymatic machinery isn't so good - that's why we've got to get better at understanding microbial community dynamics during these processes. Not a super microbe - but a super community. (Even our current "super" communities can only get rid of between 30-50% of crude oil). But it is the ultimate bio-weapon, even at that rate. Re: skimming electricity off of an electrical wire? They can generate it, but I'm not sure about using it - perhaps not for growth, but maybe to help drive membrane reactions, etc.
I've been hearing about different bugs living on diesel fuel and aircraft fuel for a long time now. While I was looking that link I was surprised to see how many products were being produced for biocides in fuel systems. Apparently this is a, ahem, growing problem.
There was a book published some time ago,the hero was fired because the new computer system did not allow last names longer than 18 places, his was 23 or 25. He develops a magnetic tape eating mold and spreads it using squirt guns.
Now I've got to find that and reread. There was also using hole punches to change the # of proxy votes at the annual meeting. At the time it was high tech.
I read "Mutant 59, the Plastic Eaters" back in the '70s -- I really enjoyed it at the time. And I believe that I still have my copy around somewhere, so will have to dig it out and read it once more.
I remember (and think of when flying from time to time!) one scene where the critters started digesting all of the plastics on an airliner, turning them to goo. This scene ended soon after wiring insulation was so affected, as I recall.
BTW, there is a company near San Diego that makes specially engineered blends of microbes for cleaning up oil spills, among other things. They are US Microbics and are doing quite a bit of work for Mexico these days.