The wax worm, the larva of a common insect called the great wax moth (gazelnite), is a pest that affects beehives in Europe. In the wild, worms live as parasites in bee colonies after wax moths lay eggs in hives.
The recent discovery was made by chance, after the researcher Federica Bertocchini, passionate about beekeeping, removed the parasitic larvae from the hives and temporarily stored them in shopping bags. After noticing that holes appeared in the worm containers, Bertocchini, from the Institute of Biomedicine and Biotechnology in Cantabria (CSIC), Spain, began a experiment with Paolo Bombelli and Christopher Howe of the Department of Biochemistry at Cambridge University.
In the controlled study, about one hundred wax worms were exposed to a regular plastic bag. After only 40 minutes, holes appeared in it, and after 12 hours a 92 mg reduction in plastic was observed.
According to the researchers, this rate of degradation is extremely fast compared to other recent discoveries. One of them, made last year, identified a bacterium capable of destroying certain types of plastic at a rate of only 0.13 mg per day.
A certain enzyme is responsible for this process, and “its large-scale reproduction using biotechnological methods could be achievable,” said Bombelli, the study’s author, published Monday in the journal Current Biology.
“This one discovery “It could be an important tool to get rid of polyethylene bag waste from landfills and oceans,” he said.
Polyethylene is heavily used for packaging and accounts for 40% of total plastic demand in Europe – where up to 38% of plastic is dumped in landfills.
Worldwide, about one trillion plastic bags are used each year.
Caterpillars eat plastic while changing its chemical composition, as explained by Bombelli, who said that the next step is to identify the molecular process that underlies this reaction to isolate the enzyme responsible for destroying the plastic.
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