NUS scientists unveil a faster way to “train” bacteria for complex tasks, like munching plastics

NUS scientists unveil a faster way to “train” bacteria for complex tasks, like munching plastics

Millions of tonnes of plastic waste accumulate in landfills and oceans every year. One promising response is to engineer microbes to break the plastic down into useful chemical building blocks. However, teaching a bacterium to digest plastic efficiently demands fine-tuning not just one gene, but entire clusters of genes working in concert, like upgrading every machine on a factory assembly line rather than swapping out a single part. A new platfo

Scientists unveil a faster way to 'train' bacteria for complex tasks, like munching plastics

The approach uses a reprogrammed virus that evolves 160,000 times faster than the host, effectively training bacteria to consume a common plastic ingredient. After five cycles, plastic degradation improved by over 50%.

Engineered Bacteriophage Speeds up the "Training" of Plastic-Eating Bacteria

Millions of tons of plastic waste build up in landfills and oceans each year. One promising approach is to engineer microbes to break plastic down into useful chemical building blocks.

Virus Teaches Bacteria to Eat Plastic 5x Faster Than Evolution Can Manage

Every seventeen minutes, give or take, a bacteriophage called T7 tears open an E. coli cell from the inside. It has spent that time making perhaps 180 copies of itself, each one packed with DNA, and now the cell ruptures to release them into the world. Scientists at the National University of Singapore have been watching this cycle very carefully. Not because they want to destroy bacteria, but because they think the whole violent business could …