Polystyrene is not very chemically reactive, and breaking it down with industrial recycling methods that break polystyrene down to its styrene components takes high heat (upwards of 400 degrees Fahrenheit). It’s made up of up a series of linked, repeating chemical units called styrenes. Polystyrene is one of the most common plastics used today, appearing as packing peanuts, packaging, as CDs and DVDs, among a multitude of other applications. “We could also identify the bacterial lineages that possess these polystyrene-degrading capabilities.” “We are the first ones to use a high-resolution method potential polystyrene-degrading enzymes in the microbes of the superworm guts,” Rinke tells New Scientist’s Carissa Wong. Samuels for Scientific American. The enzyme that degrades the polystyrene appears to reside with the gut bacteria, namely the Pseudomonas, Rhodococcus and Corynebacterium species, not the worm itself. The researchers sequenced the organisms in the superworm’s gut microbiome to find the specific enzymes linked to plastic degradation, writes Fionna M. About 93 percent of the bran-fed larvae formed pupae, while about 67 percent of the polystyrene-fed larvae and 10 percent of the starved larvae pupated. ![]() After three weeks, some larvae were also set aside to grow into beetles, per the study. On the other hand, the plastic-fed worms gained much less weight and were overall much less healthy than the bran-fed ones, though better off than the starvation group. “This suggests the worms can derive energy from the polystyrene, most likely with the help of their gut microbes.” ![]() “We found the superworms fed a diet of just polystyrene not only survived, but even had marginal weight gains,” Rinke said in the statement. Over three weeks, they monitored their growth. In the study, scientists split beetle larvae into three groups, feeding one group wheat bran, one polystyrene and one nothing. “The breakdown products from this reaction can then be used by other microbes to create high-value compounds such as bioplastics.” “Superworms are like mini recycling plants, shredding the polystyrene with their mouths and then feeding it to the bacteria in their gut,” Chris Rinke from the University of Queensland in Australia said in a statement. In a study published in Microbial Genomics, they write that these “superworms,” of the species Zophobas morio, could help reduce plastic waste in the future. Researchers in Australia have identified enzymes in the gut of certain beetle larvae that can degrade plastic.
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