So, taking a non-expert look at the actual study, it looks like they first depolimerize PET into some acyl hydroxamate as a preparatory step.
Then it seems the big finding here is that this Lossen rearrangement, a regular non-biological chemical step, doesn't kill E. Coli. They derive PABA from that step.
And the E. Coli hasn't done anything yet, but since it's still alive, the cute trick is to turn PABA into APAP (acetaminophen). We already knew how to do that, but I suppose it demonstrates the point
Now what I don't get is what was wrong with running the Lossen step separately, and only feeding the output to the bacteria.
This article makes it sound like a miracle way to turn plastic into small molecules. They found that one of the step won't kill E. Coli. But it seems like all the steps were already possible before.
I know nothing about this, but it seems like the kind of distinction that might make something easier/cheaper in practice. As in, do everything in a vat rather than needing to filter and pipe things around in a chemical facility.
> Paracetamol is the Australian Approved Name and British Approved Name as well as the international nonproprietary name used by the WHO and in many other countries; acetaminophen is the United States Adopted Name and Japanese Accepted Name and also the name generally used in Canada, Venezuela, Colombia, and Iran. Both paracetamol and acetaminophen are contractions of chemical names for the compound.
The major part of this discovery was about something that e. coli already did on its own before genetic modification, so no not particularly. They might be able to engineer a symbiotic bacterium to live in your blood (there's a lot of doubt here), or more likely and less risky engineer a bacterium that consumed microplastics to live in your gut delivered as a probiotic or as a "vaccine" that you ate that would infect your existing microbiome.
And not an mRNA vaccine, those are kind of too simple and are mainly there to annoy the immune system. You would either use a virus to inject new genes into bacteria or insert plasmids into bacteria in a lab which would later be consumed.
Readit News
Then it seems the big finding here is that this Lossen rearrangement, a regular non-biological chemical step, doesn't kill E. Coli. They derive PABA from that step.
And the E. Coli hasn't done anything yet, but since it's still alive, the cute trick is to turn PABA into APAP (acetaminophen). We already knew how to do that, but I suppose it demonstrates the point
Now what I don't get is what was wrong with running the Lossen step separately, and only feeding the output to the bacteria.
This article makes it sound like a miracle way to turn plastic into small molecules. They found that one of the step won't kill E. Coli. But it seems like all the steps were already possible before.
Edit:
> Paracetamol is the Australian Approved Name and British Approved Name as well as the international nonproprietary name used by the WHO and in many other countries; acetaminophen is the United States Adopted Name and Japanese Accepted Name and also the name generally used in Canada, Venezuela, Colombia, and Iran. Both paracetamol and acetaminophen are contractions of chemical names for the compound.
Source: Wikipedia
https://youtu.be/ctQXDpXTNZc?si=r52UCpxSN3fgjZfq
And not an mRNA vaccine, those are kind of too simple and are mainly there to annoy the immune system. You would either use a virus to inject new genes into bacteria or insert plasmids into bacteria in a lab which would later be consumed.