{"id":223097,"date":"2016-08-22T16:16:21","date_gmt":"2016-08-22T19:16:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/?p=223097"},"modified":"2016-08-24T16:42:41","modified_gmt":"2016-08-24T19:42:41","slug":"the-bacterium-that-eats-plastic-bottles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/the-bacterium-that-eats-plastic-bottles\/","title":{"rendered":"The bacterium that \u201ceats\u201d plastic bottles"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_223098\" style=\"max-width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-223098\" src=\"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Tecno_Polli-Brick_\u00a9Miniwiz-SED.jpg\" alt=\"PET bottles: bacteria degraded 60-microgram plastic film within six weeks \" width=\"290\" height=\"221\" srcset=\"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Tecno_Polli-Brick_\u00a9Miniwiz-SED.jpg 290w, https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Tecno_Polli-Brick_\u00a9Miniwiz-SED-120x91.jpg 120w, https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Tecno_Polli-Brick_\u00a9Miniwiz-SED-250x191.jpg 250w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 290px) 100vw, 290px\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span class=\"media-credits-inline\">Wikimedia Commons\/Miniwiz SED  <\/span>PET bottles: bacteria degraded 60-microgram plastic film within six weeks<span class=\"media-credits\">Wikimedia Commons\/Miniwiz SED  <\/span><\/p><\/div>\n<p>A new species of bacterium, <em><i>Ideonella sakaiensis<\/i><\/em>, can break down and digest poly (ethylene terephthalate) plastics, also known as PET, a material used in water and soda bottles (<em><i>Science<\/i><\/em>, March 11, 2016).\u00a0 A thin film of PET, weighing 60 micrograms, was degraded within six weeks by the microorganism, which was discovered by the research group headed by Kohei Oda at the Kyoto Institute of Technology in Japan.\u00a0 The bacterium uses two enzymes, PETase and MHETase, to degrade and process PET.\u00a0 To discover the bacterium, the scientists had to go out on the field.\u00a0 First, they went to a recycling center and collected 250 PET bottles with all kinds of residue, such as water, mud and soil sediments.\u00a0 Then, they identified various microorganisms in this material, including<em><i> Ideonella sakaiensis<\/i><\/em>.\u00a0 PET waste disposal is a major environmental problem.\u00a0 In 2013 alone, roughly 56 million metric tons of the plastic were produced worldwide.\u00a0 Oda came to Brazil in 2007 on a visit funded by FAPESP, at the invitation of Luiz Juliano Neto from the Federal University of S\u00e3o Paulo (Unifesp).\u00a0 His objective was to study animal feces bacteria that could have industrial applications, especially in the decomposition of PET.\u00a0 Oda also participated in research on proteolytic enzymes, which help break down proteins (<a href=\"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/2007\/12\/01\/good-bacteria\/?cat=tecnologia\" target=\"_blank\">see <em><i>Pesquisa FAPESP <\/i><\/em>Issue n\u00ba 142<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bacteria can break down and digest plastics known as PET","protected":false},"author":475,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[168],"tags":[206,212,262],"coauthors":[785],"class_list":["post-223097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technoscience","tag-biodiversity","tag-biotechnology","tag-sustainability"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/475"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223097\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223097"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=223097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}