微生物還能吃塑料？！這項發現真的太棒了！

A student may have found a solution to one of theworld's most urgent environmental crises – breeding bacteria capable of “eating” plastic and potentially breaking it down into harmless by-products.

一名學生髮現了可以用來解決當今世界最亟待解決的環境危機的方法。那就是繁殖可以“吃”塑料，並將其分解成無害的副產品的微生物。

The microbes degrade polyethylene terephthalate– one of the world's most common plastics, used in clothing, drinks bottles and food packaging.

該微生物可以對世界上最常見的塑料——聚對苯二甲酸乙二醇酯進行降解。該塑料常被用於布料，飲料瓶，還有食物包裝。

It takes centuries to break down, in the meantime doing untold damage to its surroundings.

這種塑料通常要好幾百年才能降解，同時也會對環境有着不可估量的損害。

Morgan Vague, who is studying biology at Reed College in Oregon, said the process, if sped up, could play a “big part” of solutions to the planet's plastic problem, which sees millions of tonnesdumped in landfill and oceans every year.

就讀於俄勒岡裏德學院生物專業的學生Morgan Vague，稱如果進展加速的話，就能夠解決世界上“大部分”的塑料問題，因爲每年都有百萬噸的塑料垃圾掩埋或者投入海中。

Around 300 million tonnes of plastic is discarded each year, and only about 10 per cent of it is recycled.

每年有3億噸塑料垃圾被丟棄，其中只有10%會循環再利用。

“When I started learning about the statistics about all the plastic waste we have, essentially that told me we have a really serious problem here and we need some way to address it,” Ms Vague told .

“當我瞭解到這些塑料垃圾的統計數據，我意識到問題時多麼的嚴峻，我們需要一些方法來處理，”Vague女士說道。

After she began learning about bacterial metabolism and “all the crazy things bacteria can do”, the student decided to find out if there were microbes out there able to degrade plastic.

在學習了細菌代謝並瞭解了“細菌可以處理這些瘋狂的物質之後”她決定找出是否有細菌可以降解塑料。

She began hunting for microbes adapted to degrade plastic in the soil and water around refineries in her hometown of Houston.

於是她開始尋找她家鄉休斯敦附近精煉廠旁邊可以降解土壤和水中的塑料的微生物。

Taking her samples back to college in Portland, Oregon, Ms Vague began testing around 300 strains of bacteria for lipase, a fat-digesting enzyme potentially capable of breaking down plastic and making it palatable for the bacteria.

她把樣品帶回了俄勒岡州波特蘭市，Vague女士帶回了300種脂肪酶細菌，把這些細菌培養成可以分解塑料。

She identified 20 that produced lipase, and of those three that boasted high levels of the enzyme.

她挑出其中的20種可以產生脂肪酶，其中的有三種產生的酶含量最高。

Next she put the three microbes, on a forced diet of PET she cut from strips of water bottles.

之後她將塑料水瓶裁成條狀，將這三種新培養的細菌放入。

She was stunned to find the bacteria worked to digest the PET.

讓她震驚的是，細菌開始分解塑料。

“It looks like it breaks it down into harmless by-products that don't do any environmental damage, so right now what it's doing is breaking down the hydrocarbons within the plastic, and then the bacteria is able to use that as food and fuel,” she said.

“看起來細菌把塑料變成了一種無害的副產品，而且對環境不會造成沒有任何損壞，現在看來細菌分解塑料中碳氫化合物，細菌將其用作食物或者是燃料，“她說。

But she warned there was a “long way to go” until we will start to see the microbes eating plastic at anything like the rate useful in disposing of plastics.

不過該學生說，直到細菌分解塑料的速度能夠趕上塑料被丟棄的速度，還有一段很長的路要走，

The next step, said Jay Mellies, a microbiologist who supervised MsVague's thesis, is to speed it up, improve pre-treatments on the PET to make it more palatable, and to get the bacteria to work on a variety of plastics.

該學生的論文導師、微生物學家Jay Mellies說要提高微生物的分解的速度，下一步讓細菌更適合分解塑料，而且適用於各種不同的塑料。

“The plastic problem is huge and all of us are beginning to be aware of it,” he said. “This is not going to be the total solution, but I think it's going to be part of the solution.”

“塑料的問題很嚴峻，而且我們也都開始引起重視，”他說“這不是最完善的解決方式，不過我想這項研究能解決一部分的問題。”

Professor John McGeehan, a biologist at the University of Plymouth, who has done research into plastic-degrading enzymes, warned MsVague's research was in its early stages and more testing was needed.

普利茅斯的生物學家McGeehan，之前做過降解塑料酶的研究，告誡Vague女士，其研究還處在初級階段，還有許多的測試要做。

“These are naturally occurring bacteria that are out there in the environment and we're not looking to genetically engineer them, we're just trying to isolate bacteria and then treat the plastic in a way the bacteria can naturally digest it.”

“在自然環境中被來就存在着可以降解塑料的細菌，我們不必人爲的改變它們，我們只要把細菌隔離，然後提供塑料，它們就可以自動把塑料降解。”

（翻譯：林潯鷗）