Predicting the plastic biodegradation potential within microbial lineages and across global ecosystems
Harmony Douwes, Zuzanna Dutkiewicz, Christian Rinke · 2026
Read Predicting the plastic biodegradation potential within microbial lineages and across global ecosystems by Harmony Douwes, Zuzanna Dutkiewicz, Christian Rinke (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13461043.txt.
Description
Douwes, Dutkiewicz, and Rinke hunted in 2026 for germ genes that could chew plastic, across the world's soils and waters. Plastic waste piles up faster than bins and burns can clear it. Some germs make tools that crack it, but few such tools are known. The team built search keys from the known tools' shapes. The keys swept field gene banks from dumps, farms, rivers, lakes, and seas, plus a vast germ code bank.
Hits turned up near all over, in sea and land sets alike. The densest fields were foul rivers, polar seas, and the deep sea floor. Most hits sat in germ lines long known to chew plastic. A fresh find stood out: kin of the old Archaea branch, not thought to chew plastic at all. The map now points labs to the best grounds and germ lines to test.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Harmony Douwes, Zuzanna Dutkiewicz, Christian Rinke |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 49 KB |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |