BioEntrepreneurial Blog

Plastic Eating Bacteria

I originally got this idea from a talk I had with my mom, though now after reading a bit about other people's ideas, I've found that there are many ways to look at the idea of plastic, or other excess material eating bacteria. Personally, my idea was that if bacteriologists could genetically modify some bacteria, who already have corrosive properties towards plastic, and enhance those aspects. The bacteria would have to be safe to handle, meaning they must be harmless towards humans. People could use them to degrade non recyclable plastics that we use in our everyday lives, such as plastic cutlery, Styrofoam cups, take-out containers and the like. Polystyrene is in many of the above mentioned products, and it is a non recyclable plastic that causes a lot of waste build up. With the bacteria, consumers, such as ourselves, could simply make a compost pile, except for plastic, place a bag, which would degrade in a few days, containing the bacteria in the middle of the pile, and leave it alone. The bacteria would then "do it's thing" and degrade the plastic into some biodegradable substance that then could either be processed further into another usable material, or simply become part of the earth, like a normal compost heap. I think it would be very helpful and would reduce the amount of waste we add to landfills and the amount we generally pollute our environment for a lack of working on where to put our harmful wastes so other creatures won't suffer from our negligence.

these are the sites I used and where you can get more information on the particular subject:
http://www.mcmaster.ca/recycle/guidelines/NRlist.htm
http://www.canyon-news.com/artman2/publish/santamonica/SANTA_MONICA-_Styrofoam_and_Non-Recyclable_Plastics_Ban.php
http://www.vestaldesign.com/blog/2006/03/styrofoam-eating-bacteria.html
http://www.ontariogenomics.ca/education/episode8.asp
http://www.regenesistv.com/indexframeset.html
Here is a styrofoam degrading bacterium: Pseudomonas putida

many thanks for reading!

Scientific BreakThrough!

I've wondered if we humans are the only one who can look in a mirror and see ourselves, after all you don't see any other creature looking at reflective surfaces half as much as one teenage girl. So I checked it out and what I wonderfully surprising. For the most part, other people thought like myself, that animals will only see another animal in a mirror, like when cats, dogs and birds play and fight with their reflections, but in fact this isn't totally true. There are animals that possess the intelligence to realize that an image they see in a mirror could actually be themselves. In 1970 several tests were done on a group of chimps to see if they didn't really see themselves. The test was to put a mark on the chimps face while it was sleeping and then when it woke up, show it the mirror so they could see themselves. When the chimp saw the other chimp in the mirror with a mark on it's face, it lifted its own fingers to touch the mark on its face, recognizing itself in the mirror. So this was actually a minor breakthrough, because after all, primates are closely related to humans and only a handful, including the chimps, passed the "mirror test". However there were additions to this discovery in 2001. Bottlenose dolphins have been shown to recognize themselves when marked with dye, so has Happy, a 34 year old Asian elephant. "The mirror test asks something quite hard, the animal has to say, 'I'm here, that is a perfect replica of me, but it isn't me'." says says Patricia Churchland, a professor of philosophy at the University of California at San Diego. This is ability is quite amazing and show that we shouldn't assume things about animal intelligence that we have not tested! Testimonies to this fact include, Alex, an African grey parrot with a vocabulary of between 50 to 100 words, who can answer questions and perform specific tasks asked of him, and Betsy, a border collie who understands 340+ words, and though she can't speak she knows the sounds of the words and their physical counterpart in her world and can distinguish the words from a sentence asking her to fetch, find or move the certain object. Both of these fantastic animals were featured in the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC of March 2008.

here's the link
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/03/animal-minds/virginia-morell-text
http://www.qbtpl.com/story/2006/11/6/03945/0058