Ghost fishing nets trap marine life and break down into microplastics in the ocean. And the problem does not end when they are brought back to shore as, more often than not, they are sent to a landfill or burned. The issue is growing: a study led by the Ocean Cleanup Foundation estimates that fishing nets constitute an alarming 46% of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
Now Nick Wierckx at the Institute of Bio- and Geosciences IBG-1 in Julich, Germany, and Danish biotech giant Novonesis, headquartered in Lyngby, have used adaptive laboratory evolution to engineer a bacterium with a pathway that metabolizes C6-polyamide monomers in this marine waste plastic, in combination with hydrolysis. Wierckx first started looking at plastic-eating bacteria in 2011, and then during the pandemic his focus narrowed specifically to solving the ghost fishing nets issue.
