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Teen Discovers Plastic-Decomposing Bacteria
ganelo writes to tell us that 16-year-old Waterloo Collegiate Institute student Danel Burd has made quite a stir with his plastic-eating bacteria discovery. For his efforts Burd won top prize at a Canada-wide science fair claiming a $10,000 prize and a $20,000 scholarship. "Tests to identify the strains found strain two was Sphingomonas bacteria and the helper was Pseudomonas. A researcher in Ireland has found Pseudomonas is capable of degrading polystyrene, but as far as Burd and his teacher Mark Menhennet know -- and they've looked -- Burd's research on polyethelene plastic bags is a first."
Now when people come back into my store and complain about their shopping bags breaking, I can tell them why!
a top secret death squad under the auspices of the upper corporate echelon at ikea have been dispatched from stockholm to deal with this potentially profit decimating threat
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Actually, the bacteria was introduced after the teen discovered the cure for cancer in a plastic dish; however, before the cure could be analyzed in order to replicate it, the bacteria ate the dish and the cure. The Associated Press quoted the boy saying "God damnnit!"
Shouldn't this be tagged, "Mutant 59"? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kit_Pedler
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
The Andromeda Strain.
as if anybody hadn't thought of THAT one yet!
Damn, and probably with a cute enviro-chick too.
Quite right. He should invest in games and hookers.
"Yeah right, so googling 'biodegradation Sphingomonas polyethene OR polyethylene' doesn't return any hits in Canada."
Second result is your post! http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=biodegradation+Sphingomonas+polyethene&btnG=Search
I think they tried that in the 80s. the result has been impossible to get of. I think they scrapped the project with the help of a "Shredder"
So if I die because of some patented gene that caused heart failure, can the company who owns that patent be sued for wrongful death? On a very basic level, it sounds like the companies who patent these genes might say they own a part of me. On another note, I would argue that evolution itself owns the original patents on every single gene out there, and by definition these patents could never expire.
But that's just me.
"Thyme flavours the prepared mind." - Hannibal Lecter
What is is all that is. Isn't that obvious?