A Possible Answer for a Pollution Problem

For a brief moment, Nathan Crook allowed himself to disregard the slow, deliberative process scientists use working in a lab. “Oh, my God,” he said, recalling the moment when his team at NC State showed that they could genetically engineer a marine microorganism so that it would break down the plastic that’s a source of significant pollution in oceans. “I can’t believe this actually works.”

Level heads quickly prevailed, and Crook, an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, recognized that they faced some significant challenges before their findings could be used to reduce the pollution caused by plastics. But still, his excitement was understandable. “Nature hasn’t figured out how to get rid of this stuff really fast yet,” he says. “Maybe we can give humanity that answer.”

The initial finding is a significant leap in the right direction. It was the result of the team’s work with two species of bacteria — one that thrives and reproduces very quickly in saltwater and another that produces enzymes that break down and eat the polyethylene terephthalate (PET) used in water bottles and other plastics. By combining the two bacteria, the team was able to break down PET in saltwater at room temperature.

Some of the next challenges are to make the modified microorganism more stable and efficient — the new process would still take many years to break down PET — and to find ways to produce a desirable end product such as fertilizer or feedstock. “We have to convert it to something useful,” Crook says. “No one is going to use it unless they can make money off of it. Waste plastic has no value, but here’s a catalyst to convert that plastic into something that has more value.”