
Clothes are often done nylon
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Genetically modified bacteria can break chemicals in Nylon and can become available in the usable products, and one day they will help us recycle clothing and fishing networks.
Nylons, or polyamides are plastics that are widely used as a result of high durability and voltage force, but their Birzikling The rate is under 5 percent.
“Production is about 10 million tonnes a year, but at the moment there is no recycling,” says Nick wierckx At the German Jülich Research Center. “The incineration is even difficult because you get cyanide. The majority ends in the landfill.”
Nylon acid can be dissolved in a solid solution, but the mixture of chemicals created is not enough to be commercially useful.
Now, Wierckx and his colleagues have used a combination of genetic engineering and laboratory evolution to create bacterial tension Pseudomonas putida This can break the various compounds that arise after the nylon dissolves and has become something useful.
The bacterium is already known to degrade oil-based materials and Breaking the oil in the spill. He is also showing promise Breaking the plastics.
Wierckz and his colleagues knew the tension P. Putida KT2440 and gene gave them to help them metabolize various chemical products in the dissolved nylon. Were then planted bacteria Until they found a strain that grows over and over again in the laboratory of these chemicals. Researchers continued to change and culture until the bacteria that can be used by Nylon compounds, such as polyhydroxybutyryrate – for non-biodegradable plastics.
” Pseudomona It consumes almost all pre-treated plastics, “says what we can measure.
But this technique requires commercially used improvements, saying Wierckx. For example, the amount of the available product is only about 7 percent of the Bacterial Biomass.
Improving the products used to microorganisms and adapting chemicals used to microorganisms. “It probably will be 10, 20, 30 years until you see this event.”
We don’t have to worry that bacteria one day they will disregard our clothes, but Wierckx says. “It’s not all plastics to eat in our clothes and cars. We need to prepare plastic to make it digestible.”
This means that we cannot use bacteria to clean old fishing networks Oceans. But Wierckx expects to have this recycling process, which will encourage the future collection of old networks with plastic resistant plastics, clothing and car search engines, so that it can be recycled.