Plastic pollution is one of the most characteristic environmental challenges of our time, and some of the smallest organisms of nature can offer a surprising exit. In recent years, microbiologists have discovered bacteria capable of decomposing several types of plastic, indicating a more sustainable path towards the future.
These microbes that feed on plastic could one day help reduce the waste mountains that obstruct landfills and oceans. But they are not always the perfect solution. In an inappropriate environment, they could cause serious problems.
Plastics are widely used in hospitals in products such as sutures (especially soluble), dressings for wounds and implants. So could the bacteria present in hospitals decompose and feed on plastic?
To find out, Professor Ronan McCarthy (Professor of University London) and Rubén de Dios (researcher at the Brunel University of London), studied the genomes of known hospital pathogens (harmful bacteria) to see if they had the same plastic degrading enzymes found in some bacteria of the environment.
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They were surprised to discover that some hospital germs, such as The aeruginosa pseudomonas They could break down the plastic. P. Aeruginosa It is associated with approximately 559 thousand deaths annually worldwide. Many of the infections contract in hospitals.
Patients with respirators or wounds open due to surgery or burns have a special risk of infection by P. aeruginosa like those who have catheters. The authors of this research decided to advance in the computational search for bacterial databases to prove the ability to P aeruginosa To eat plastic in the laboratory.
They found a specific strain of this bacterium, which had a gene to produce an enzyme that devours plastic. This had been isolated from a patient with an infection in a wound. They discovered that not only could the plastic decompose, but it could also use it as a food to grow. This capacity comes from an enzyme that called PAP1.
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The World Health Organization considers the aeroginous P. a High priority pathogen. It can form resistant biofilms that protect it from the immune system and antibiotics, which greatly hinders its treatment.
The team of researchers showed that when environmental bacteria form biofilms, they can decompose plastic faster. So the enzyme that degrades the plastic could contribute to the fact that P. aeruginosa become a pathogen. This enzyme caused the strain to be more harmful and contributed to form larger biofilms.
To understand how P. aeruginosa He built a larger biofilm to be on plastic, decomposed and then analyzed its composition and discovered that this pathogen produced larger biofilms by including degraded plastic in this viscous layer, or “matrix”, as formally known. P. aeruginosa He used plastic as cement to build a stronger bacterial community.
Pathogens like P. aeruginosa They can survive for a long time in hospitals, where plastics are omnipresent.
Many medical treatments involve plastics, such as orthopedic implants, catheters, dental implants and hydrogel pads for burning treatment. The study suggests that, a pathogen capable of degrading the plastic of these devices could become a serious problem. This can cause treatment failure or worse the patient’s condition.
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Fortunately, scientists are working in solutions, such as adding antimicrobial substances to medical plastics to prevent germs from feeding on them. But now that we know that some germs can break down the plastic, we will have to take it into account when choosing materials for medical use in the future.
*Ronan McCarthy is Professor of Biomedical Sciences at the Brunel University of London; Rubén de Dios is a postdoctoral researcher in biotechnology from the Brunel University of London.
This article was originally published in The Conversation
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