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."

Comments

Absolutely Beautiful

[Walter Wart]

It was kitchen table science done by himself with no budget, no grant and no assistants. You aren't supposed to be able to do Real Science(tm) like that anymore. So how did the kid do it?

1. He thought a of a simple problem that hadn't been solved
2. He investigated the obvious avenues first
3. He used the resources at his disposal instead of trying
4. He chose something where success and failure would both be easy to demonstrate

This was really good science. If he keeps it up look for his name with the words "Full Professor" in front and a list of patents afterwards some time soon.

Re:Absolutely Beautiful

[v(*_*)vvvv]

5. Got lucky.

Re:Absolutely Beautiful

[David Gerard]

"Chance favours the prepared mind" - Louis Pasteur.

Re:Absolutely Beautiful

[h4rm0ny]

"The harder I work, the luckier I get" - Samuel Goldwyn (apparently).

Ah, this story

[Haoie]

When I first came across it, I thought that it was an idea that needs some serious development. Plastics take up a huge amount of landfill space worldwide, and this is of use in the future.

That and recycling plastics, obviously.

Unintended consequences

[Starvingboy]

I can't help but wonder about untindended consequences. Looking around at all the plastics, having them inadventantly eaten by bacteria would be a BAD thing.

Re:Doubtful

[Ihmhi]

Well, the US patent process certainly hasn't stopped anyone from patenting the human genome.

Re:No cigar..

[arodland]

Come back when your "ocean evaporation" theory can explain why Venus is twice as hot as Mercury.... Dur, because Mercury has no atmosphere to speak of? Half the distance from the sun that Earth is, a twentieth the mass, and tidally locked into three rotations for every two revolutions? Not exactly the ideal candidate for climate study... and Venus? You realize Venus has an atmosphere that not only is more than 95% CO2, compared to 0.04% on Earth, but is also nearly a hundred times denser? To what degree do you think that observing the difference between 95% CO2 @ 90 atm and 0.04% CO2 @ 1 atm, or the difference between 95% CO2 @ 90 atm and 3% CO2 @ ~0 atm will give you insight on the difference between 0.04% CO2 @ 1 atm vs. 0.045% CO2 @ 1 atm?

Re:But is it a good thing?

[RodgerDodger]

*sigh* It's called a positive feedback loop. Increased temperatures do result in increased CO2 levels. Increased CO2 levels then result in increased temperatures. And thus the cycle continues upwards until something causes it to stop. The real big giveaway is that the temperature increase always accelerates as CO2 concentrations goes up.

This is a simple laboratory experiment that anyone can do. Heck, they did it on MythBusters.

And yes, it's true that natural processes put out a lot more CO2 than humans do. That's not the point. Natural processes are more or less balanced; what nature puts out, nature absorbs. What we are doing is upsetting the balance so that there isn't enough capacity. One of Dicken's characters said "Annual income 20 pounds, annual expenditure 19 six, result happiness. Annual income 20 pounds, annual expenditure 20 pounds ought and six, result misery." - his point was that all you need to do is live just a little beyond your means to cause big problems.

Heck, it doesn't even matter if we _are_ the main cause or not. If we're not the main cause, we're still contributing to the problem at least a bit. Personally, I'd rather be the cause - it would imply that we could fix it.