That's Some Hungry Fungi! Fungus Capable of Eating Plastic Found.

Pestalotiopsis Microspore

Originally created in the 1900s, synthetic plastics have myriad uses. Plastic makes up disposable water bottles, bags, packaging, headphones, cellphones, and countless other everyday items. However, plastics are also detrimental to the environment. Incredibly durable and taking hundreds or even thousands of years to degrade, we waste alarmingly large amounts of the substance every year. The plastics that we throw out can sit in landfills for generations, seemingly impossible to get rid of. However, researchers at Yale have found a fungus from the Amazon rainforest with a rather fantastic property - it is capable of digesting polyurethane.

Known as Pestalotiopsis microspore (member of the family Amphisphaeriaceae, order Xylariales, class Sordariomycetes, subclass Xylariomycetidae, and phylum Ascomycota), the fugus was first found in Ecuador. It is able to subside solely on polyurethane and is the first fungus ever discovered that is capable of doing so. Not only is this remarkable in and of itself, but the fungus can also break down the plastic anaerobically (without oxygen). The team of scientists also found the enzyme that enables the fungus to digest the polyurethane. The researchers believe that this enzyme is a promising development in bioremediation and a huge leap forward in removing plastics from landfills.

Formation Reaction of Polyurethane 

Sources:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/249216/yale_discovers_a_fungus_that_eats_plastic.html

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-02/rainforest-fungus-eats-plastic-potentially-solving-landfill-problems

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic#Environmental_issues

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pestalotiopsis_microspora

Images courtesy of:

http://www.jessicastuartmusic.com/wp-content/gallery/pre-jsfew/mushroom-spores.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Polyurethane.png