Plastic-eating caterpillars
Scientists may have found an unlikely
candidate to clean up the mounds of nonbiodegradable
plastic trash in the world’s
landfills: the humble wax worm.
Federica Bertocchini, a developmental
biologist and amateur beekeeper
in Spain, first came up with the idea
after finding her beehives infested
with the beeswax-loving caterpillar
larvae of wax moths. She put the
grubs in a plastic bag—whereupon
they immediately ate their way out.
Plastic and wax have similar chemical
structures. Bertocchini posited
that in evolving to digest wax, wax
worms may have also gained the
ability to break down polyethylene,
the world’s most common plastic. She took
her theory to biochemists at the University
of Cambridge, who found that 100 wax
worms could gulp down 92 milligrams of
polyethylene in about 12 hours and degrade
plastic bags much faster than any known
method. “If a single enzyme is responsible
for this chemical process,” study co-author
Paolo Bombelli tells CNN .com, “its reproduction
on a large scale using biotechnological
methods should be achievable.”
